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Guakdian Angel. 



The 

• • • • X 11 v.. • • • • 



LIFE BEYOND 



OR 



LIGHT 

/ 

On the Dark Valley 



AND 



The Life Eternal 



...as seen in... 



The Best Thoughts of Over Three Hundred of the 
World's Leading Authors and Scholars 

By 

j/h/potts, D. D. 

Editor " Christian Advocate," Detroit. Author of " Pastor 
and People," The Golden Way," &c. 



ILLUSTRATED 



P. W. ZlhGLER & CO. 

PHILADELPHIA and CHICAGO 






TWO COPi Es RECEIVER 

Library of C0jf gm « 
°™ce of the 

Register of Copyright 



48646 



Copyright 1899 
CHARLES POLLOCK 



SECOND COPY, 









S 






DEATH AND IMMORTALITY. 



THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 



RESURRECTION AND JUDGMENT. 



PUNISHMENT AND REWARD. 



"We are born for a higher destiny than that of earth. 
There is a realm where the rainbow never fades; wr.ere 
the stars will be spread out before us like the islands that 
slumber on the ocean ; and where the beautiful beings that 
here pass before us like visions will stay in our presence 
forever." — Bulwer. 

" Death, judgment, heaven, hell, eternity, God— these are 
the realities. To ignore them is the supreme folly of man. 
For- a man, with the capacities and destiny of human na- 
ture in him, to ignore these truths, is as unscientific as it 
would be for a geologist to ignore granite ; or an astrono- 
mer, gravitation."— Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, D.D., LL.D- 



(iii) 




EDITOR'S PREFACE 



HERE is no question of more absorbing interest to humanity 
than that of ultimate destination. Living in a world where 
the sad memorials of death are ever passing and repassing 
before the eye, the inquiry often recurs to the mind, " What 
shall become of me when I die ? Where shall I be when 
they put my form in the grave? For there is a voice within me 
which says I will not be put in the grave ; my body shall be put there, 
but what shall become of me — where shall I be ? " Happily we are 
not left in darkness and uncertainty upon this point. Where Nature is 
silent, God speaks ; where Reason fails, Revelation is at hand, con- 
firming the hopes and beliefs of godly souls, and pointing'upwards to 
the glories of heaven's unclouded light, a ray of which is sent to cheer 
the pilgrim on his weary way. 

The first great point of man's future is death. This is the point 
where scientific knowledge ends, and where faith and reason begin. 
When the spirit leaves the body, its material medium of communica- 
tion, it can no longer testify to us, and, with the burial rites, our 
observation ceases. Death, therefore, is a centre around which clus- 
ters a great variety of opinion, belief, fact, truth, error, and even of 
superstition. To this important subject is devoted considerable space 
in the following pages. The thoughts presented will be of great 
value, not only to those who mourn and those who comfort mourners, 
but to all who think, and all who want help to think further upon the 
vital question — the question upon which all others pertaining to the 
future turn — whether indeed death ends all, or whether it be only the 
first momentous step out upon a deathless life. 

If it is shown conclusively that death is but the entry to a new 
phase of sentient existence — a necessary darkening before a brighter 
day — then endlessness of being becomes an assured fact, and the 
sublime destiny of humanity is a solved problem; for, none can sue- 

(v) 



v i EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

cessfully deny that if we die only to live, that future life will be 
forever. Once admitted that a mysterious something in man escapes 
the awful destruction of the temple of clay and the mournful desola- 
tion of the vacated earthly sphere, it is easy, in joyous assurance, to 
follow that incorruptible part to its proper state and station before the 
throne of the Majesty in the heavens. Upon these, and kindred 
questions, the matter of the following pages is brought to bear, with 
what degree of success will be best ascertained by a thorough reading. 

In the compilation of these thoughts the Editor has trusted his own 
pen only when, after considerable research, a sufficiently concise 
statement from the pen of another has failed to appear. He has 
acted upon the belief that a paragraph or page over an honored name 
is more readily trusted than the most thorough remodelling of the 
same matter by an humbler pen. The reader wants the truth, the 
light, the best learning of his question ; and he wants to see it in the 
very shape in which he would have read it had he himself investi- 
gated the authorities. 

In roaming through the fields of literature, the Editor has been 
astonished to find how little progress has been made for a century past 
either in raising objections to the great doctrines of Eschatology, or 
in successfully answering them. In this department of theology, at 
least, old truth is ever new, and new error is ever old. 

Obligations are hereby acknowledged to Rev. T. O. Summers, D. D., 
LL. D., Bishop W. X. Ninde, D. D., and Rev. Alfred Brunson, 
D. D., for thoughtful papers, and to many others who have placed 
original matter at the author's disposal for the selection of briefer 
paragraphs. 

It remains further to say only that little space has been allowed 
herein to the processes of logic. Conclusions themselves, which often 
form the thread of an argument in a whole sermon, essay, lecture, or 
even a printed book, are all that could be given. Those further ku 
terested can follow up their investigations in other channels, while 
those whose opportunities will not admit of more extended research, 
will be glad to possess this receptacle of keys to those doctrines which 
hold the faith of many of the world's greatest scholars. 



CONTENTS. 



FA.RT L-DEATH. 



CHAPTER I. 

LIFE. 

What is Life ? Joseph Cook ; 27 

Psychological Definition of Life D. D. Whedon, D. D„ LL. D. 28 

Whence came Life ? Editor 28 

The Object of the Mosaic Record Prin. J. W. Dawson, LL.D . . 32 

The Fact of Creation Unchanged by Theories. Duke of Argyll 23 

Manifestations of Life Pres. Mark Hopkins, LL. D . . 34 

The Law of Growth, Decay, and Death H W. Thomas, D.D 37 

Frailty of Life Thomas Chalmers, D.D 38 

The Average Age of Man Anonymous 39 

Extreme Age of Man Professor Flourin 39 

Longevity before the Flood W-. H. De Puy, D.D 40 

Increasing Longevity Anonymous 40 

CHAPTER II. 
PHYSICAL DEATH. 

Phenomena of Death J. H. Wythe, A. M., M. D 41 

Solemnity of Death T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 42 

The Approach of Death Charles Dickens 43 

Symptoms of Dying Hippocrates 44 

Process of Dying Professor Draper 45 

Act of Dying Anonymous 45 

Verification of Death Editor 45 

Revivification Editor 46 

Painlessness of Death Zschokke 47 

Illusion of Death Richter 48 

Exquisite Sensations of Dying W. W. Hall, A.M., M. D 48 

Certainty of Death Phillippe 48 

No Security from Death President Edwards 49 

(vii) 



Viii CONTENTS. 

rAGB 

Man's Persuasion of the Certainty of Death . . . Editor 50 

Uncertainties of Death. Phillippe 51 

Inexorability of Death Sir Walter Raleigh. . . . 51 

Insatiability of Death Andrew Marvel , 52 

Death the Chief of Calamities President Edwards. . . . . . 52 

People Dying Constantly Rev. James Hervey, A. M. ... 53 

All Classes Falling Robert Blair 53 

CHAPTER III. 
DEATH IN RELATION TO THE EARTHLY LIFE. 

The Distance of Death Rev. W. Nevins, D. D 54 

Small Space Between Life and Death Divine Breathings c 55 

Dying Before we Begin to Live Divine Breathings 55 

The Hour of Death Mrs. F. D. Hemans 55 

Death a Break in the History of Life Dr. Luthardt 56 

Death the Separation of Soul and Body. ...... John Wesley 57 

The Pang of Separation John Logan, F. R. S 58 

The End of Sorrows Watson 59 

The First Death Rev. John Reid. 59 

An Enemy's Death . . Hugh Blair, D. D 59 

The Enemy's Grave Washington Irving 60 

The Stranger's Death Alexander Pope 60 

The Dead Wife W. W. Hall, M. D 61 

The Dead Husband Isabella Graham 61 

The Dead Son — Letter to a Mother Samuel Johnson, LL. D 62 

The Dead Son — Letter to a Father Dr. Ebenezer Erskine 63 

The Dead Daughter William Wirt 64 

The Father's Death Edward H. Bicker steth, M. A.- 64 

The Young Mother's Death Robert Pollok 65 

Death in Life's Morning Charles Wadsworth, D. D 66 

Death at Life's High Noon Daniel Curry, D. D., LL. D. . 67 

Death at Life's Evening Hour W. B. Stevens 68 

Why Weep ? Anonymous 68 

What can an Old Man do but Die ? Thomas Hood. 68 

The Generations of Men William Arthur, M. A.. ... . . . 68 

Extending Life a Pleasant Office. Alexander Pope 7 1 

To Whom Death Arrives Graciously Lord Bacon 7 1 

To Whom Death is Odious Lord Bacon 7 1 

Death a Relief. Robert Burns 72 

CHAPTER IV. 

DEATH VARIOUSLY DESCRIBED C 

Death but a Point of Life Mary G. Ware 72 

Death Completes our Blessedness John Howe • . . 72 



CONTENTS. i x 



PAGE 



The Stream of Death Anonymous 73 

Death the Termination of a Voyage Mary G. Ware 74 

Death a Veil Anonymous 74 

Death a Horizon Professor David Swing 74 

Death a Dark Entry Isaac Watts, D.D 75 

Death a Darkening and a Dawning F. W. Faber, D.D 75 

Death not what it Seems to be H. S. Carpenter, D.D 75 

Non-Existence of Death Lord Lytton 76 

Death Naught but Parting of the Breath Edward Spenser 77 

The Valley of the Shadow of Death John Bunyan 77 

The Genius of Death George Croly 79 

Death Knocks Indiscriminately Horace 79 

Death Comes Equally to all John Donne 79 

The Tireless Reaper Editor 80 

The Last Welcome of Friends A. Bronson Alcott 80 

A. Vision of Death James Freeman Clarke 80 

Estate of a Man at Death Divine Breathings 81 

The Sleep of Death Eliza Cook 82 

Six Feet of Earth will Contain us when Dead . Anonymous 82 

Death a Conqueror T. Dewitt To linage, D.D 83 

A. Terrible Invader J. R. McDuff, D.D 83 

The Dominion of Death Dr. Luthardt 84 

Death's Final Conquest James Shirley 84 

The Weapons of Death James Hervey, A. M. 85 

Death is Abrupt. Macmilla-11 86 

The Time of Each is Drawing Near Chas. S. Robinson, D.D , 86 

Death is Impudent T. Dewitt Talmage, D.D 86 

Death is Unsuspected MacMillan 87 

Death Rides on Every Passing Breeze Bishop Heber 88 

Death is Marking his Victims Henry Ward Beecher 88 

Death Levels Earthly Distinctions James Saurin, D.D 88 

Origin of the Skeleton as the Image of Death . Isaac Disraeli 89 

Heathen Symbols of Death Isaac Disraeli 90 

A Common Image of Death Archbishop Trench 91 

A Ceasing to be what we were Before Seneca 91 

Heathen Personifications of Death Anonymous 91 

Death by Drowning R. S. Tracy, M. D 92 

Death by Crucifixion Cunningham Geikie, D. D . . . . 94 

Suicide Robert Blair 95 

Sudden Death Zschokke , . . . 96 

Live for the Summons W. C Bryant 96 

All Deaths are Sudden H. S. Carpenter, D.D 96 

Death Comes as a Thief. Robert Hodgson, D.D 97 

Unconscious Death Thomas Guthrie, D.D 97 

The Mystery Before us William Cullen Bryant 98 



x CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 
VARIOUS SENTIMENTS RESPECTING DEATH. • 

PAGI 

Aversion for Death Lady Gethin 99 

Thou Art Terrible Fitz Greene Halleck- 100 

Death is Appalling Bishop D. W. Clark, D.D 100 

The Fear of Death Lord Bacon 101 

To Die and Go we Know not Where William Shakespeare 102 

The Darkening of Death's Night Robert Southey 102 

The Terror of Death an Intellectual Notion. . . C. S. Robinson, D.D 103 

Death Formidable Because Unknown Calvin Colton, D.D 103 

Death Less than the Fear of it ,. . . . Joseph Alleine 103 

In what Season is Death Most Affecting? Thomas De Quincey 104 

Preference for the Time of Death W. C. Bryant 104 

Presentiments of Death „ Francis F. Upham, D. D 106 

Revival of Memories by Death Nathaniel Hawthorne 106 

Solitude of Death W. M. Taylor, D.D 106 

Use of Death Zschokke 107 

Fearful to Witness Death Lord Byron 108 

Choosing Death John Ruskin 108 

Making Light of Death Editor 109 

Man's Strange Conduct in Respect to Death. .Robert Hall, D.D no 

The Inquiry of the Soul Richard Fuller, D.D 1 10 

Heathens Seeking to Forget Death Thomas Guthrie, D.D in 

Searching Questions Concerning Death Zschokke in 

Meditation on Death Thomas A' Kempis 112 

Contemplating Death Henry Kirke White 1 14 

Preparation for Death Bishop Thomas A. Morris . ... 1 14 

Everything Depends upon it Bishop Thomas A. Morris. ... 1 15 

Ready for Death Christian Scriver 115 

He that Waits on God is Ready Ozuen Feltham 116 

Joyous to Die when Ready Mrs. Anna L. Barbauld. 1 16 

CHAPTER VI. 
SIN AND DEATH. 

Death to Man is the Penalty of Sin .Alfred Brunson, A. M., D. D... 116 

Death the Wages of Sin Philippe 119 

Death the Companion of Sin Christian Ernst Luthardt 120 

Death, Sin, Woe Philip Melancthon 121 

The Sting of Death is Sin Richard Watson, D.D 121 

Untimely Death and Special Sin William M. Taylor, D. D 122 

The Disorganizing Effect of Sin Horace Bushnell, D.D 123 

Misery Resulting from Sin Christmas Evans, D.D 125 

The Miserable- End of Wicked Men Divine Breathings 127 

The Dying Sinner Philippe 128 

Death-bed Repentance N^tJnvestern Christian Advocate 128 



CONTENTS. x j 

PAGE 

A Slender Plank Lawrence Sterne 129 

Let not Repentance be Deferred Jeremy Taylor 129 

The Pauline Conception of Death J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D... . 129 

The Johannine Conception of Death J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D... . 13Q 

CHAPTER VII. 

CHRISTIANITY AND DEATH. 

Death Needs all the Consolations of Religion . Thojnas Guthrie, D. D 130 

Christianity Solves the Problem Daniel Webster 132 

The Voice of Reason in Respect to Death .... Hugh Blair, D.D 133 

Contentment in Death James Boswell. 135 

The Bible our only Solace C. S. Robinson, D.D 136 

Christ the Arbiter of Death A. C. Thompson, D. D 136 

Christ will meet the Believer Norman McLeod 137 

Death's Terrors Quelled on Calvary Isaac Barrow, D.D 138 

Assistance in the Hour of Death Hugh Blair, D. D -138 

The Peace of the Just Philippe - 139 

Faith the Secret of Composure Sir Henry Halford. 140 

Faith Sees the Resurrection Sir Walter Raleigh 140 

Faith Breaks the Bondage to Fear Joseph Alden, D. D., LL. D . . 140 

Terrors Banished Bishop Phillips Brooks 141 

The Sting Removed John Logan, F. R. S 142 

Death Defeated CM. J 143 

The Possession of Death A. E. Dickenson, D. D . . 143 

" I'll Cry, ' Remember Me ! '" Dr. Thomas Haweis 144 

Death Vanquished Divine Breathings 144 

Beauty of the Christian's Death Daniel March, D.D 144 

Like the Descending of Ripe Fruit Jeremy Taylor 146 

Death a Friend Dr. Thomas Gouge 146 

Triumph in Death an Evidence of Christianity . Arthur T. Pierson, D.D 146 

The Good Man's Hold on Heaven Edward Young, D.D 147 

Causes of Christian Triumph Bishop D. W. Clark 147 

Triumph not Always Rapture F. W. Robertson 149 

Death Cannot Harm the Good Charles Dickens 150 

Death Cannot Break up Friendship H. Clay Trumbull. 1 50 

Why do the Justified Die ? Professor A. A. Hodge, D.D... 150 

Why do Children Die ? D. L. Flemming, M. D 151 

CHAPTER VIII. 
DEATH IN RELATION TO MAN'S HIGHER NATURE. 

Death not Annihilation Professor A. A. Hodge, D.D... 15 1 

Death not Destruction Bishop Joseph Butler 152 

The Soul Survives Death Zschokke 153 

The Soul's Progress Unchecked Rev. Thomas Stalker 153 



x ii CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Death not a Suspension of Living Powers Bishop Joseph Butler, LL. D.. 155 

The Powers of Life Intensified Isaac Taylor 155 

The Memory in Death Bishop D. W. Clark, D. D 156 

The Imagination in Death Isaac Disraeli 157 

The Spiritual Faculties Quickened Bishop R. S. Foster, LL. D.. . . 158 

CHAPTER IX. 
DEATH IN RELATION TO THE FUTURE LIFE, 

What Death Introduces to Edward Payson, D. D 159 

The Great Change Edward Payson, D. D 160 

Nearness of the Invisible Bishop M. Simpson, LL. D... . 160 

We Fall, we Rise, we Reign Edward Young, L>. D 161 

Death Connects Time and Eternity Bishop M. Simpson, D.D.,LL.D 162 

Death a Commingling of Eternity and Time.. . Goethe 162 

Death a Lifting up Henry Ward Beecher 163 

Death a Birth H W. Thomas, D. D 163 

Believers Catch Glimpses of Glory in Death. . .Rev. W. B. Clark 165 

Their Enemies are all Stilled Dr. John Gill. 166 

Death as Viewed by the Primitive Christians. . W. H. Withrow, M. A 166 

Not Humiliation, but Exaltation H. W. Beecher 167 

The Spirit Active Beyond Zschokke 168 

The Spirit Retains its Human Form Bishop D. W. Clark, D. D 169 

Retains all Desirable Knowledge of Earth. . . .Richard Baxter, D. D I7< 

The Moral Character Unchanged Bishop E. Tho?npson, LL. D . . 171 

Character Continueth Forever Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, LL. D . . 172 

Identity Preserved Henry Harbaugh 173 

Spirit Consciousness Editor 174 

How Differently does Death now Appear Zschokke 175 

Blessing God for Death Melchior Adams 176 

Why not Think Better of it ? Thomas Guthrie, D. D 176 

The Deathless Life Watchword 177 

Beyond .' Mrs. J. E. Akers 178 



:f\a.:r,t il-the iD^rinsro. 



CHAPTER I. 
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

The Dying Compared with those who think 

themselves Dying David Nelson, M. D 181 

The Dying Never Weep. Anonymous 183 

Why do the Dying Never Weep ? Rev. John Reid. 184 

Force of Dying Words Shakespeare 185 

Last Words have Power to Live Alfred Tennyson 185 



CONTENTS. x iii 

CHAPTER II. 
DYING TESTIMONIES AND LAST WORDS. 

PAGE 

How Dr. Livingstone Died Editor 185 

Dying Unbelievers and Worldly Persons Editor 186 

Dying Children and Youth Editor 192 

Dying Believers Editor 196 

Last Words of Distinguished Soldiers, Civilians 

and Sovereigns Editor 204 

CHAPTER III. 

DEATH SCENES. 

Poisoning of Socrates Translation from Plato. ...... 206 

Crucifixion of Christ J. T. Headley 208 

Physical Cause of Christ's Death Cunningham Geikie, D. D . . . . 210 

Another View Robert Curran, M. D 210 

Never Man Died Like this Man Hugh Blair, D.D.. 211 

The Fate of the Apostles Anonymous 212 

Nero and the Christian Martyrs Good Words 213 

Burning of Polycarp Editor 214 

Exposure of Perpetua W. H Withrow, M. A 215 

Persecutors in Death W. H. Withrow, M. A 216 

Decapitation of Lady Jane Grey A. Owen 217 

Slaughter of the Huguenots W. Morley Punshon, LL. D. . . 217 

Marie Antoinette A. Owen 219 

Mary, Queen of Scots A. Owen • 220 

Jane, Queen of Navarre . .Bishop D. W. Clark 220 

Rev. John Wesley, A. M Rev. John Beechavi 221 

Augustus M. Toplady Editor 224 

Death of Goethe Thomas Carlyle 225 

Samuel Rutherford Editor 227 

George Whitfield Anonymous 228 

Edward Payson, D. D Rev. Edwin L. Janes 229 

Prince Albert Theodore Martin 230 

Kingsley's Last Days Anonymous 232 

William Carvosso Daniel Wise, D. D 232 

Bishop Davis W. Clark, D. D '. Ladies' Repository 233 

T. M. Eddy, D. D General Clinton B. Fiske 235 

Bishop Gilbert Haven Editor 237 

Song in Dying Wm. Hunter, D. D 239 

Instance of Fidelity in Death E. L. Magoon 240 

Fortitude in Death Dr. Sherwen 241 

Courage in Death J. H. McCarty, D. D 241 

Waiting for the Angelic Convoy John S. C. Abbott 242 

Anthony and Cleopatra General W. H Lyttle 244 



Xiv CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

Dying in Despair Canada Christian Advocate. . . . 245 

" Mother, I'm Tired ". Hans Christian Andersen-, ... . 247 

The Dying Newsboy New York Paper 247 

The Dying Babe New York Methodist 248 

The Pauper's Death Caroline Bowles 250 

The Best Time Children's Friend. . . . , 25 1 

God Knows St. Nicholas 252 



PART III. — THEE DEAD. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE BODY AFTER DEATH. 

Dead „ Anonymous 255 

The Body only the Temple of the Soul Richard Baxter, D. D 256 

Separation of Soul and Body T. 0. Summers, D.D 256 

Change of Countenance After Death Charles Dickens 257 

Disintegration of the Body T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D.. 257 

A Dismal Spectacle Philippe 258 

CHAPTER II. 
FUNERAL CUSTOMS. 

Ancient Egyptian Funeral Rites. Sir I. G. Wilkinson, D. C L. . 259 

Ancient Jewish Funeral Customs Editor 261 

Influence of Christianity upon Burial Customs.. Augustus Neander,D. D ..... . 262 

Eulogizing the Dead Rev. John Reid. 262 

A Senseless Custom Daniel Wise, D. D 263 

Christianity can do yet more for us T. M. Eddy, D. D 263 

The Dirge Henry King 264 

The Desolation , William G. Elliot 265 

After the Burial of a Daughter J . Russell Lowell 265 

The Relief of Tears Joseph Parker, D.D 267 

After the Funeral Anonymous 267 

The Fields of the Dead Bishop L. L. Hamline, D.D. . 268 

Number of the Dead Anony?nous 269 

Room for the Dead Professor David Swing 270 

A Mother's Grave Anonymous 271 

A Mother's Grave N W. Jordan 27 1 

How Peaceful the Grave ! "Rtissian Anthology " 272 

Lessons from a Graveyard Lord Macaulay ....... . 27a 



CONTENTS. xv 

CHAPTER III. 
MOURNING FOR THE DEAD. 

PAGE 

Grief for the Dead John Gill, D. D 273 

Christianity does not Repress Weeping E. Wentworth, D. D 274 

Patience in Grief Tertullian 274 

Inward Grief Shakespeare 275 

The Child and the Mourners Charles Mackay 275 

The Influence of Sorrow William G. Eliot 276 

The Just Limits of Sorrow Chrysostom 277 

Sorrow Bishop Huntington 278 

Why Glorified Souls should not be Lamented. . Cyprian 279 

The Child is Dead S. Irenceus Prime, D. D 279 

Falling Asleep in Innocence Richter 281 

Poignancy of Parental Grief Editor 281 

The Reaper and the Flowers H. W. Longfellow 283 

They Err who yield to wild Emotions Sir Aubrey De Vere 284 

Parental Submission Mishna of the Rabbins, 284 

The Mother's Anguish Anonymous 285 

The Loss of Children Thomas Brooks 285 

Children Taken in Mercy Flavel 286 

Consider ere you Accuse Providence Fenelon 286 

On the Death of a Child , Belfast Selection 287 

Gone Before Anonymous 287 

Sadness not Unhappiness Zschokke 288 

Mournful Memories are Precious James Martineau, D. D 289 

CHAPTER IV. 
STATE OF THE DEAD. 

Sources of Information T. O. Summers, D.D., LL. Z>.. 290 

The Bible Reveals the Existence of the Soul 

after Death « " " .. 291 

No Sleep of the Soul « " " . . 291 

Development in the Separate State " " " . . 292 

Iniants in the Intermediate State " " " . . 293 

Heathens in the Intermediate State " " " . . 295 

No Purgatory " " " . . 296 

No New Probation in the Separate State " " " . . 298 

Degrees of Rewards and Punishments " " " . . 298 

The Dead Live Bishop R.S. Foster, DD.,LL.D. 299 

Their Works Live Rev. G. Hamilton 300 

The Dead Speak William Aikman, D. D 301 

The Dead are Active Beyond J. Glasgow, D. D 302 

The Dead Near us S. Irenceus Prime, D. D 303 



xv i CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

The Dead in Christ Dr. James De Koven 304 

They Enter into Immediate Rest Charles Wesley 305 

The Pious Dead are in Heaven Rev. J. Bowman 306 

Blessed are the Dead A. McLaren 308 

The Wicked Dead are in a State of Suffering. .Amos Binney, D.D 309 

How Ought these Truths to Affect us ? Editor 309 

The Dead and the Living 31©* 



:p.A.:e,T i^^.---iis^:isj:oE,a7A.LiT"5r- 

Introductory Statement Editor 313 

Grandeur of Immortality. M. F. Tupper 314 

1 Doctrine has a Charm Zschokke 314 

Is not Incredible Sir Humphrey Davy v 315 

If an Error, a Delightful One Cicero 316 

Obscurity of the Future Hugh Blair, D.D -316 

Unanswered Queries Rev. John Reid. . . 317 

Why the Future is Left in Obscurity Hugh Blair, D. D., F. R. S.. . 317 

The Future Not Uncertain to Faith President Noah Porter, D. D.. 318 

The Soul — Its Value Rev. William Hutton 319 

The Soul is Independent of the Body Joseph Cook 320 

Its Operations Under Defective Bodily Con- 
ditions Editor 321 

The Soul Immaterial James Freeman Clarke 322 

Kindled up at Death L. Lee, D. D 322 

The Soul Superior to Death W. R. Alger 323 

The Voice of Nature Bishop E. Thompson, LL. D . . 325 

" Gathered to his Fathers " William Arthur, M. A 327 

Immortality the Unconditional Destiny of All . .H. Martensen, D. D 327 

Made for Immortality J. G. Whittier 328 

Common Sense Assumes it Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, LL. D . . 329 

Life Worthless Without it President C. H. Payne, LL. D. 329 

The Egyptian Belief James Bonwick, F. R. G. S. . . 330 

Remove Immortality — and What is Man ? Lchabod S. Spencer, D. D 331 

Man's View of Death Implies it M. K. D 331 

Jewish Ideas Professor Knapp, D.D 332 

The Heathen's View Gerard Ulhorn, D.D 333 

Belief of Socrates B. F. Cocker, D.D 335 

Preserved Safe and Sound Socrates 336 

The Arguments of Plato B. F. Cocker, D. D 336 

The Reward of Virtue Requires Immortality. .Edward Young, D. D 337 



CONTENTS. xv jj 

PAGE 

Dr. Dick's Arguments Editor . . . 338 

Immortality Inferred from the Soul's Desires 

and Powers Miner Raymond, D. D 340 

Man's Progress Points to Another World Bishop H. W. Warren, D. D... 341 

The Soul's Instincts Thomas Binney, D. D., LL. D. 342 

Man's Imperfect State Points to Immortality. .Hugh Blair, D. D., F. R. S. . . 343 

Creation, and the Pleadings of the Heart-life. .H. W. Thomas, D.D 344 

A Voice Within us Speaks the Word Richard Henry Dana 346 

Our Cravings to be Satisfied F. W. Robertson 346 

The Hope of Immortality John Bascom 346 

The Yearnings of the Soul Daniel Curry, D. D., LL. D.. 347 

Conscience Witnesses Hugh Blair, D. D., F. R. S. . 347 

Love Speaks George D. Prentice 348 

The Universality of the Affections Sir H. T. Buckle 349 

" What's Human is Immortal " Lord Bulwer Lytton 350 

Life Itself Points to Life Beyond Chr. Ernst Luthardt, D. D.. . 35© 

Man's Perpetual Advancement Joseph Addison 351 

Changes of Fortune Indicate Discipline for 

Eternity Joseph Sutcliffe, D.D 352 

This World Represents Another E. Adkins, D.D 35-? 

The Soul Demands a Future Canon Liddon 353 

The Idea of Immortality Itself a Proof. Chr. Ernst Luthardt, D. D.. . . 353 

Proven by the Testimonies of the Dying Editor 353 

Bible Argument Editor 354 

Religious Proofs Richard Baxter, D. D 357 

The Doctrine as Jesus Taught it George C Larimer, D.D 359 

The Christian Idea of it Dean Stanley, LL. D. 360 

Heathen Tradition and Christian Verity John M. Mason, D. D 361 

Influence of Faith in a Life to Come Canon Liddon, D.D 362 

The Subject Ought to Engage our Anxious 

Care Thomas Dick, LL. D 364 

Immortality Comforts the Heart Lra G. Bid-well 364 

The Views of Scientists A. Wilford Hall. 365 

Truths of Immortality Inspire A. E. Kittredge, D. D 366 

The World to Come Sir John Bowring 366 



SZEOOISTID A-ID-VEISTT. 

Relations of the Millennium J. P. Lange, D. D., LL. D. . . 369 

Significance of the Millennium Bishop L. L. Ham line, D. D. . 369 



xviii CONTENTS. 

FAGB 

Jesus to Reign over the Whole World Rev. C. II. Spurgeon 369 

Christianity Fossesses Universal Adaptation... . Thomas Armitage, D.D 373 

God's Gulf-Current Flows on Joseph Cook 375 

Conditions of Heathen Salvation D. D. Whedon, D. D., LL.D.. 375 

Achievements of Christianity Already Great.. .L. R. Dunn, D.D 376 

Heathenism Giving Way George V. Leech, A. M. 378 

Sin is Powerful, but Will be Conquered Bishop J. F. Hurst, LL. D.. . . 379 

Decline of Superstition J. M. Arnold, D.D 380 

Numerical Progress Bishop C. J. Ellicott, D. D.. . . 381 

The Ultimate Triumph R. W. Dale 382 

When Nations Shall Learn War No More. . . .Elihu Burritt 384 

The Coming Christian Manhood Bishop J. H. Vincent, D. D... 385 

" I Hear the Voice of Christ say, Peace ! " H. W. Longfellow 385 

Serving the Future William Arthur, M. A 385 

Bible Doctrine of Christ's Second Coming. . . .Bishop W. X. Ninde, D. D.. . 387 



PART VL-KESURRECTIOISr OF 
THE DEAD. 

Resurrection of the Body T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 395 

Even the Heathen had Glimpses of the Doctrine Terlullian 395 

The Resurrection Shall Occur Tertullian 396 

Egyptian Belief James Bonwick, F. R. G. S... . 397 

Heathen Shades Transformed Bishop E. Thompson, D. D.. .. 398 

The Doctrine Taught in the Old Testament. ..Miner Raymond, D. D 399 

Christ's Death and his People's Sleep Chrysosto?7i 400 

Voices from Tomb of Nature and Tomb of Jesus John Logan, F. R. S 401 

Taught Prominently in the New Testament. . . William Cooke, D. D 402 

Omnipotence Adequate Bishop J. H. Hobert, D. D.. .. 403 

Death Leads to a Rebuilding Chrysostom 404 

Death Results in a Remoulding Chrysostom 405 

A General Resurrection Necessary Robert South, D. D 405 

Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life Archbishop Trench 406 

Christ's Resurrection F. W. Krummacher, D. D. . . . 407 

The Prelude of Ours Thomas Guthrie, D.D 408 

If Christ be Not Risen, What ? J. Monro Gibson, D.D 408 

Raising of the Widow's Son Editor 410 

The Raising of Jairus' Daughter Zachary Eddy, D. D 411 

The Resurrection of Christ a Historic Certainty Heinrich Ewald 412 

The Resurrection of Lazarus Editor 412 

True Theory of the Resurrection ,.,..«.. .H. Mattison, D.D 413 



CONTENTS. XIX 

PAGE 

An Ascending Scale of Difficulty < , . .Archbishop Trench 414 

Christ Attested the Doctrine Tertullian . . 415 

The Saints which Arose after Christ's Death.. .D. D. Wkedon, D.D 416 

The Spiritual Body Samuel Wakefield, D. D.. . .... 417 

Properties of a Glorified Body Thomas Aquinas. . . . . „ . 417 

Scientific Views of the Spiritual Body Joseph Cook 417 

Re-embodiment of the Soul Rev. H. M. Grout , 419 

Identity of the Future with the Present Body. . . Rev. H. M. Grout 420 

Marvellous Endowments E. P. Goodwin, D.D 422 

Man will Rise with the Same Moral Character. Thomas Chalmers, D. D ..... . 423 

Similitude of the Resurrection John Knox. ... 423 

Some of Nature's Analogies Tertullian . . . . 425 

The Opening Graves T. Dewitt Talmage, D.D 426 

Resurrection of the Righteous W. M. Bunting. 427 

A Chemical Process Illustrating the Resur- 
rection H. W. Thomas, D.D 429 

Resurrection of Damnation T. Deiuitt Talmage, D.D 430 

Objections Archbishop Tillotson 431 



PAET VII.-THE 0-EISTEI^-A.L 

j"TJiDa-ivrEisrT_ 

Man's Sense of Accountability Miner Raymond, D.D 437 

The Heathen's Forebodings . . Taylor Lezvis, LL. D 438 

Judgment is Certain Rev. Charles M. Southgate . . . . 438 

The Purpose of the Judgment Professor IT. Cowles 439 

The Disorders of Society Require it James Saurin, D.D 439 

A Day Proclaimed Daniel Curry, D. D., LL. D . . 441 

The Great Surprise William Cooke. D.D 442 

Brighter than the Sun Martin Luther 443 

The Universal Terror Bishop Jeremy Taylor 443 

Place of the Judgment E. Adkins, D.D 445 

Order of the Judgment Day Adam Clarke, LL. D.. . „ 445 

Biblical Representations Editor 446 

The Day of Death Practically the Day of Judg- 
ment Melchior Ada?ns 452 

Prepai-ation for the Judgment Albert Barnes, D.D . . 453 

The End o r the World Professor G. C Knapp, D. D. . 454 

The Heavens Passing Away Thomas Dick, LL. D 455 

The Dissolution of all Things James Saurin, D.D 456 

End of Time Editor 457 

Death of Death " 458 

The Second Death " , 459 

The Second Death Dean Alford .... 460 



XX CONTENTS. 

IP^IRT -\TTTT„—FTJJSrT&ttl*!LJE2<r r r OF 
THE ^TICKED. 

PAGE 

A Future of Darkness Rev. John Reid. 463 

Far Removed from the Light of Heaven John Milton 464 

The Doctrine of Future Punishment Conspic- 
uous in the Teachings of Christ J. H. Bayless, D. D 464 

Punishment According to Deservings C. H. Zimmerman, A. M. . . . . 466 

How the Wicked are Ensnared George B. Cheever, D.D 467 

Nature and Duration of Future Punishment. . . .N. H. Axtell, D.D 468 

Eternal Imprisonment Editor 475 

No Reprieve L. T. Townsend, D.D 477 

No Annihilation Jonathan Edzaards, D.D 479 

The Word " Everlasting " W. Jeffers, D.D 480 

Taking the Word as it Stands H. Clay Trttmbull. 481 

The Mental Agony Dr. Doddridge 482 

The Fearful Company Dr. Beaumont 482 

Gehenna, or the Lake of Fire Bishop S. M. Merrill, D. D.. . . 482 

Hell Described! Robert Pollok 484 

Reasonableness of Future Punishment W. Jeffers, D.D 484 

General Belief in the Doctrine J. M. Arnold, D. D 486 

W T hy we Believe the Doctrine W. S. McC. 486 

What Denial Involves Joseph A. Seiss, D. D 490 

Fact not Changed by Feelings . „ Albert Barnes 493 

Error of Faith Will not Exempt from Suffering. Bishop E. M. Marvin, D. D. . 494 

Employment of the Lost E. Adkin, D.D 494 

Retributive Sufferings Nehemiah Adams, D.D 495 

The Plaint of a Lost Soul Edzvard II. Bicker steth 496 

Objections Answered James Saurin, D.D 497 



FA.RT IX.-KE\VARD OIF TKE 
RIGHTEOUS. 

Boundlessness of the Universe Richtcr 507 

Grandeur of the Soul's Destiny E. D. Griffin, D.D 508 

The Vision of the Deity William Cooke, D.D 508 

What Heaven Implies Adam Clarke, LL. D 511 

Heaven a Place Chanc. Hozvard Crosby, D. D . . 512 

The Blessed Land Ray Palmer, D. D 513 

1 leaven as a City Rev. C. M. Sotithgate 514 

The New Jerusalem Horatius Bonar, D.D 515 

The Inhabitants Thereof John Btmyan 516 

The Land Where Beauty Never Dies Nancy D. A. W. Priest 518 



CONTENTS. xx i 



PAGB 



The Mount of God H. S. Carpenter, D.D 519 

Heaven as a Home E. Adkins, D.D 519 

Other Figures of Heaven Joseph Beaumont, D.D 520 

Future Glories Surpass all Present Excellencies. James Saurin, D.D 521 

The Superior Glory H S. Carpenter, D. D 522 

Personal Thoughts of Heaven Editor 523 

To Be With Christ Bishop D. W. Clark, D. D 529 

To Be Like Christ Bishop M. Simpson, D.D 529 

To Know as We are Known % BishopC H.Fowlcr,D.D. ,LL.D 531 

The Joys of Heaven Pres. James McCosh, D. D. .. . 532 

Good Works of Heaven Richard Baxter, D.D 534 

Employments of Heaven Pres. Asa Mahan, D.D., LL.D. 535 

They Praise Him Day and Night Marianne Famingham 537 

A Picture of Ravishing Beauty Bishop R.S.Foster, D.D.,LL.D. 538 

Measureless Ages of Life E. D. Griffin, D.D 539 

Time Enough in Heaven H. W. Tho?nas, D. D 539 

The Lull of Eternity F. R. Havergal 541 

Immortal Youth Rev. John Reid. 542 

Immortal Strength W. B. Sprague, D. D 543 

Eternal Love Zschokke 544 

A Progressive Life Rev. D. M. Reid 545 

Degrees of Glory J. R. McDuff, D. D 546 

Shaping the Future J. G. Whittier 546 

Heaven the Consummation of Eternal Felicity. Joseph Sutcliffe, A. M. 547 

Many Mansions James Spencer, M. A 547 

Eternal Progression E. D. Griffin, D.D 548 

The Power of an Endless Life Horace Bushnell, D.D 550 

Rule of Rank in Heaven Isaac Taylor 552 

The Condition of Reward Richard Baxter 553 

Positive Rewards McClintock & Strong 554 

The Ground of Reward R. L. Dashiel, D. D 555 

The Loss of Our Work Bishop E. M. Marvin, D.D. . 557 

What is Not in Heaven Rev. W. Nevins, D.D 557 

No Lamentations Bishop L. L. Hamline, D.D . . 558 

Heavenly Worship Richard Watson 559 

Martyrs in Heaven T. Dewitt Tabnage 560 

At Evening Time it Shall Be Light 562 

Friends in Heaven Anonymous 563 

The Familiar Faces T. Dewitt Talmage, D.D 563 

They Wait to Welcome Us Dr. Berg 564 

Steps in the Way of Life . . St. Barnard 565 

The Journey to Eternity John Wesley, A. M., F. R. S. . .. 565 

The Journey of Eternity Oberlin Evangelist 566 

Out of the Shadows /. W. Ryan . , . . . 566 

More than Midway Abbie Mills 567 

The Song of the New Life J. Stanford Holme, D.D 568 



XXii CONTENTS. 

The Soul's Arrival in Heaven James Hervey 569 

The First Hour in Heaven F. W. Faber, D. D 570 

Two Years in Heaven Rev. Dr. Prime ... 571 

Will Infants Remember Things Pertaining to 

Earth? Rev. John Reid 573 

Look up to Heaven A. G. C. 575 

The Parting and the Meeting R. A. Bertram 576 

In the Land of the Blest. Mrs. Abdy 577 

Here and There » . . H. S. Carpenter, D.D 578 

Grounds of Future Recognition. , Theodore L. Cuyler, D.D 578 

The Other World c .Mrs. H. B. Stowe 581 

Personal Recognition E. P. Goodwin, D. D . „ 582 

What if Friends are Missed ? „ . John dimming, D.D., F. R. S. 584 

How Shall I Know Thee ?. William Cullen Bryant 587 

How Can I Prepare for Heaven ? A. J. D 58'S 

The Condition of Entrance Dschellaleddin Rumi 589 

Holiness the Beatitude of Heaven Thomas Chalmers, D.D.,LL.D. 589 

Holiness Essential to Happiness John Henry Newman 590 

Problems to Solve in Eternity President Asa Mahan, D. D . . 591 

The Saints Shall Shine as the Stars T. Dewitt Tahnage D.D 593 

Ministering Spirits W. Morley Punshon, LL.D. . . . 595 

Heaven Begins on Earth „ Rev. F. D. Huntington, D. D... 597 

Soon we Shall Know it All Bishop R. S. Foster. , 598 

The Golden Hills 599 

Waiting for the Dawn Hayes C. French, M. D 600 

The Morning of the Everlasting Day C. F. Deems, D. D 600 

Rejections Editor „ „ 6o« 



List of Illustrations. 



i. 

2. 

3- 

4- 
5- 

6. 

7- 
8. 

9- 

10. 

i r. 

12. 

13- 

H- 
15- 
1 6. 

17- 
18. 
19. 
20. 
21. 
22. 



guardian angel, . . . . . . Frontispiece 

THE FIRST DEATH, l6 

DEATH, 

life's advent, 

" all my possessions for a moment of time. 
Queen Elizabeth, 

THE DYING CHILD, 

MOTHERLESS, 

ALONE, 

OPHELIA, 

THE DYING CONFESSION, 

DEATH OF MARSHAL LANNES, 

THE DYING, 

" LET ME HEAR ONCE MORE THOSE NOTES SO LONG MY 

SOLACE AND DELIGHT. Mozart, . 

ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, . 

" SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME, . 

THE CRUCIFIXION, . . 

ST. SEBASTIEN, 

LADY JANE GREY GOING TO THE SCAFFOLD, . 

SLAUGHTER OF THE HUGUENOTS, 

MARIE ANTOINETTE ON THE WAY TO EXECUTION, . 

DEATH AT SEA, 

THE DEAD, ... .... 

(23) 



25 

33 

48 
64 

81 

84 

93 
129 
144 
179 

181 
188 

193 

208 

213 
216 
217 
220 
241 
253 



24 



LIST OF ILL US TRA TIONS. 



AND MARTHA, 



ADVENT, . 



23. THE ENTOMBMENT, . 

24. IN mother's PLACE, . 

25. THE MAN OF SORROWS, 

26. THE SORROWING MOTHER, 

27. GONE BEFORE, . 

28. IMMORTALITY, . 

29. CHRIST AT THE HOME OF MARY 

30. CHRIST THE COMFORTER, . 

31. THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND 

32. RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, 

33. RAISING THE WIDOW'S SON, 

34. RAISING JAIRUS' DAUGHTER, 

35. THE GENERAL JUDGMENT, . 

36. PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED, 

37. REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS, 

38. " I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE 

Supper, 

39. "come unto me," . 

40. " in my father's house are many mansions 

41. to the realm of light, 

42. look up to heaven, 

43. the babe of bethlehem, 

44. ministering spirits, 

45. THE ASCENSION, 



FOR YOU." — The 



Last 



256 

273 
2/7 
284 
288 

3ii 

356 
365 
367 

393 
405 
412 

435 
461 

505 

512 
529 
545 
560 
576 
593 
597 
604 




A presentation of various scientific, psychological, physiological, the- 
ological, poetical, and practical aspects of the event of death, 
in which it isclearlv demonstrated that 



" tls not the whole of llfe to live, 
Nor all of Death to die." 



[25] 



"And death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, 
for that all have sinned." — Rom. v. 12. 

" What is death ? O h I what is death ? 
'Tis the snapping of the chain ; 

"Tis the breaking of the bowl ; 
'Tis relief from every pain ; 

'Tis freedom to the soul ; 
'Tis the setting of the sun, 

To rise again to-morrow— 
A brighter course to run, 

Nor sink again to sorrow. 
Such is death! yes, such is death!" 



(26) 



J he Life Beyond. 




CHAPTER I.— LIFE. 

WHAT IS LIFE? 

^fjORRECTLY defined, life in physical organisms is tlie 
power which co-ordinates tlie movements of germinal 
matter. 

Why not say that life in physical organisms is the 
power which co-ordinates the movements of the bio- 
plasts ? Because there are individual animalcules which have 
life, and yet consist apparently not of many bioplasts, but of a 
single naked throbbing mass of this germinal matter. When 
such an animal wishes to digest its food, it sometimes thrusts 
the nutriment into its side, making a stomach there, which 
absorbs the pabulum ; and then the debris is removed, and the 
animal is whole again. This procedure evidently involves a 
co-ordination of movements ; and we say that the action by 
which such an animalcule digests its food is not the result of 
chemical and mechanical forces merely, but of life which directs 
them, or of a power which co-ordinates the throbbing of that 
single mass of bioplasm of which the animalcule may consist. 
There is a co-ordination there such that a process essential to 
the preservation of the animal is carried through triumphantly ; 
and the chemical and physical forces do not account for that co- 
ordination. Something must account for it ; and that something 
we call life. The power is there, for we see its effects. But 
when we rise to the more complex organisms, the fact of 
co-ordination stands out before us with blazing vividness. We 
have co-ordination upon co-ordination, wheel within wheel ; and 
the cause of co-ordination we call life. — Joseph Cook. 

(*7) 



2$ DEATH. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL DEFINITION OF LIFE. 

Our physiological brethren are greatly puzzled to find 3 
definition of life. To us it seems odd that they never look to the 
world of mind, nor ever recognize such a thing as intelligence 
in their pursuit after a definition. As a psychologist, at any 
rate, Ave have, or imagine we have, no difficulty — so far, at least, 
as psychology is concerned. Life we define as that state of 
organic matter which is necessary to its becoming the basis of 
intelligence. Or, more briefly, Life is the organic condition of 
thought. This, indeed, defines animal life alone ; and rightly, 
for animal life is a different thing from vegetable life, and so the 
same description ought not to suit both. Vegetable life, [{life it 
is to be called, is the organic condition of the true growth process. 
The animal shares the same organic life as the vegetable, with a 
higher thought-conditioning life; so that both animals and 
vegetables grozv, and nothing else does grow. Neither a rolling 
snow-ball nor a crystal grozvs, but animals and plants alone do 
grow. Vegetable life, therefore, is the organic condition of growth, 
while animal life is the organic condition of thought. 

How does a microscopist decide that a scarce visible animal- 
cular particle is alive ? In no other way than by its movements 
resembling those produced by volitions in larger animals. So 
that manifested volition after all is with him the test of life. But 
even the first faint gleam of sensation in a material particle 
would imply life. And this enables a psychologist, at any rate, 
to draw in thought the real distinction between animals and 
plants, which in their lowest orders become undistinguishable to 
the eye of the physiologist. The animal belongs, however 
dimly enlightened, to the intelligent world. And between intel- 
ligence and absolute unintelligence the difference is infinite. The 
faintest possible spark of sensation in the lowest animal being is 
in nature one with the highest intelligence, and belongs to the 
universe of mind overlying the universe of matter. — D. D. 

Whedon, LL. D. 

WHENCE CAME LIFE? 

The origin of life has been the subject of much speculation 
among scientists, who have essayed to account for the existence 



y. H. POTTS. 2$ 

of life other than by the direct creation of God. When they 
have together settled upon any unscriptural theory which is not 
only plausible but provable, and demonstrated its truth by sub- 
stantial and irrefutable evidence, it will be time for theologians 
to cast about for a co-ordination of the essential faith of Chris- 
tianity with the indubitable finality of science. 

Whatever verification the doctrine of the derivative descent 
of animal and vegetable forms has thus far received — certainly 
no satisfactory solution has yet been given to the problem, 
Whence came the earliest and lowest form of life? Darwin 
with his " Natural Selection," Huxley with his "Protoplasm/' 
Spencer with his " Universal Evolution," and the long train of 
philosophers from Aristotle to Bastian, with their variously mod- 
ified theories of " Spontaneous Generation," have all alike failed 
to account for the first existence of that " power which co-ordi- 
nates the movements of germinal matter." Futile has been 
every effort to penetrate into the mysterious temple of life in 
order to lay bare its principle, and the greatest philosopher 
approaches no nearer than the crowd. That eminent physiolo- 
gist, Professor Lionel S. Beale, of King's College, London, in 
his recent work on " The Mystery of Life," says : " Notwith- 
standing all that has been asserted to the contrary, not one 
vital action has yet been accounted for by physics and chemistry. 
The assertion that life is correlated force rests upon assertion 
alone, and we are just as far from an explanation of vital phe- 
nomena by force-hypothesis as we were before the discovery of 
the doctrine of the correlation of forces." And he adds that 
each additional year's labor, in this field of investigation, " only 
confirms him more strongly than ever in the opinion that the 
physical doctrine of life cannot be sustained!' 

We take our stand on the broad, safe, and scriptural platform, 
that Omnipotence alone is adequate to produce life. Spon- 
taneous Generation, like perpetual motion, is a thing unknown. 
The scientist who searches for the one is equally vain with the 
philosopher who labors for the other. Let it be affirmed, with 
the great and good Agassiz, that " it is necessary that we recur 
to a cause more exalted, and recognize influences more powerful,. 



SO 



<DEATH. 



exercising over all nature an action more direct, if we would not 
move eternally in a vicious circle." Every existing living or- 
ganism has come from a parent, and every original parent came 
forth at God's command, accordingly as he said, " Let the earth 
bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping 
thing, and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so/' 

In a very recent work, entitled " Life, its True Genesis/' by 
Judge R. W. Wright, the author has sought to establish the vital 
point that the primordial germs (meaning germinal principles 
of life) of all living things, man alone excepted, are in them- 
selves upon the earth, and that they severally make their appear- 
ance, each after its kind, whenever and wherever the necessary 
environing conditions exist. The foundation of this emphatic 
formula is laid in Genesis, first chapter and eleventh verse, "And 
God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, 
and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in 
itself, upon the earth : and it was so." The phrase, " whose 
seed is in itself," the author translates, "whose germinal prin- 
ciple of life, each in itself after its kind, is upon the earth." 
This is more like the Septuagint translation than that of our 
common English version of the Old Testament. As for the 
origin of this germinal principle of life which is bringing forth 
each living thing, at least in the vegetal world, after its kind, 
the author goes on to show that the distinct and separate com- 
mands given to the earth to bring forth would never have been 
given, had the earth " not first received its baptism of life from 
God — in other words, derived the animating principle of life 
from the source of all life." 

By the phrase, after his kind, we are to understand not only 
that the different species of animals were given a distinct and 
separate existence, but that that existence was to be character- 
istically perpetuated throughout all succeeding generations. It 
is in virtue of this law that the hypothesis of the transmutation 
of species is rendered untenable, since not a single instance of 
such transmutation has ever been verified. Every beast, bird, 
fish, insect, and plant, brings forth " after its kind," or according 
to its species, and has always done so. That eminent British 



J. H. POTYS. 3I 

geologist, Sir Charles Lyell, affirms that " each and every spe- 
cies was endowed, at the time of its creation, with the attributes 
and organs by which it is now distinguished." From Cuvier 
down, all practical naturalists maintain this law. 

Life, then, original and essential life is from God. As St. 
John declares concerning the divine Logus, " In him was life, 
and the life was the light of men." He is the source of life, 
the fountain of life, and had he not imparted from his fullness to 
the now fruitful earth, no living, visible form would ever have 
appeared. 

Be it noted that we have not here outlined the process of 
creation, nor have we set bounds to the creational period. We 
have simply maintained that every species of vegetal and ani- 
mal life, owes its origin to God, whether worked up to higher 
and still higher degree of symmetry and perfection through vast 
pre -Adamite periods, or spoken into full-orbed being in a day. 

The Bible account of the creation of man is more definite and 
complete than that of the lower orders of life. While skeptical 
science insists that man has been climbing up from protoplasmic 
matter, through a thousand other and lower organisms, until he 
finally leaped from an anthropoid ape into himself, the Scriptures 
represent him as coming direct from the hand of God, who 
made him in his own image, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life, so that he became a living soul ; all this, too, 
after God had commanded the waters and the earth to bring 
forth abundantly of every living creature. The scientific genesis 
would make him little higher than the apes ; the Bible Genesis, 
" little lower than the angels." Certain it is, that if man is con- 
sidered a part of the animal pyramid, he is the crown and sum- 
mit of it. He is the master-piece of the Creator's handiwork on 
earth. He not only combines in himself the excellencies of all 
the lower order of animal organizations, but these excellencies 
in a higher degree. He is the lord of creation as well as the 
heir of God. He has always been the object of special divine 
attention, and is promised a destiny as far exalted above his 
present life, as his present life is exalted above the existence of 
the ascidian worm. — Editor. 



32 DEATH. 

THE OBJECT OF THE MOSAIC RECORD. 

1. The first great object of that "book of origins" which we 
have in Genesis, is to assure us of the reality of creation, and of 
God as the great First Cause. The one utterance, " in the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth," if received in 
faith, is subversive of atheism, materialism, pantheism, agnosti- 
cism, and a hundred other false doctrines which have afflicted 
humanity. The author of Genesis does not attempt to prove 
this great truth, but a moment's consideration suffices to show 
that it needs no proof. The universe exists with all its wondrous 
and complex machinery. Either it must have existed eternally, 
which is inconceivable, or it must have been produced. If pro- 
duced, then it had a beginning, and could not have produced 
itself. But before it began, there must have been a power 
capable of planning and producing it, and that power must have 
been God. The Hebrew writer calls him Elohim, a plural name, 
— not merely a plural of dignity, but implying that plurality of 
person and action which he himself recognizes in the word of 
God and the Spirit of God, and implying also that all true god 
head, by whatever names recognized in different tongues, is the 
one God, the creator. 

2. The next object of the record of creation is to show us that 
all the details of nature are the work of one God, and parts o^ 
one plan. The heathen nations recognized many local and 
partial gods, and they deified heavenly bodies, mountains, rivers, 
trees and animals. The writer of Genesis grasps the whole of 
this material of ancient idolatry, and shows that it is the work of 
one God. Thus no room is left for polytheistic views of nature, 
nor for that superstition which regards natural phenomena as 
the work of malignant beings. Here, again, he lays down a 
principle which commends itself at once to common sense, and 
which all science tends to support. Nothing can be a more 
assured result of scientific study than the unity of plan and 
operation in all nature, and the folly of these superstitions which 
refer natural events either to chance or to the conflict of subor- 
dinate deities or demons. Thus the first chapter of Genesis, 
wherever received and believed, gives the death-blow to idolatry 
and superstition. 



DAWSON— DUKE OF ARGYLL. 33 

3. Another great use of the record of creation is the assertion 
of the truth that man is the child of God, created in his image 
and likeness. The first question in some of our catechisms for 
children, " Who made you ? " points to this first and primitive 
doctrine of religion, on which the whole relation of man to God 
as a moral and responsible being is built. Here, again, Genesis 
is in accord with the best science and philosophy. It is true that 
there are theorists in our time who profess to believe that the 
human will and reason have in some way developed themselves 
from the instincts of lower animals. But these men cannot but 
feel that they are maintaining a most improbable conclusion, for 
it is not in accordance with natural analogy that anything should 
rise above its own level, that any motive-power can put forth 
more or other than the energy that is in it. Thus an intelligence 
like man cannot flow upward from lower sources, but must have 
relation to some higher creative intelligence. — Principal jf. W. 
Dawson, LL. D., in S. S. Times. 

THE FACT OF CREATION UNCHANGED BY THEORIES. 

Whatever may have been the method or process of Creation, 
it is Creation still. If it were proved to-morrow that the first 
man was "born " from some pre-existing form of life, it would 
still be true that such a birth must have been, in every sense of 
the word, a new Creation. It would still be as true that God 
formed him " out of the dust of the earth," as it is true that he 
has so formed every child who is now called to answer the first 
question of all theologies. And we must remember that the 
language of Scripture nowhere draws, or seems even conscious 
of, the distinction which modern philosophy draws so sharply 
between the natural and the supernatural. All the operations of 
nature are spoken of as operations of the divine mind. Creation 
is the outward embodiment of a divine idea. It is in this sense, 
apparently, that the narration of Genesis speaks of every plant 
being formed " before it grew." But the same language is held, 
not less decidedly, of every ordinary birth. " Thine eyes did see 
my substance, yet being imperfect. In thy book all my members 
were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet 
3 



34 DEATH. 

there were none of them." And these words, spoken of the 
individual birth, have been applied not less truly to the modern 
idea of the Genesis of all organic life. . . . No possible theory, 
whether true or false, in respect to the physical means employed 
to preserve the correspondence of parts which runs through all 
Creation, can affect the certainty of that mental plan and purpose 
which alone makes such correspondence intelligible to us, and 
in which alone it may be said to exist. — Duke of Argyll. 

MANIFESTATIONS OF LIFE. 

No less than six times is this passage, or its equivalent, given 
us by the Evangelists : " For whosoever will save his life, shall 
lose it : and whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find 
it." This indicates its deep significance and central position in 
the Christian system. The subject spoken of is life. , , 

Thirty years ago I said in a public discourse that " the prin- 
ciple of life is one of the great principles of nature," and " when 
we see it acting with the same uniformity, and at times with the 
same apparent blindness as the other powers of nature, we can 
neither doubt that it is to be ranked as one of those powers, nor 
that it is among the greatest and most striking of them," It is 
the highest of those powers, and subordinates all others to itself. 
It breaks up strong cohesions ; it picks the lock of chemical 
affinity , it mocks at gravitation as it lifts the top of its pine 
three hundred feet into the air. It is an artist, a Prae-Raphaelite. 
It gives the shell in the deep sea its voluted form, and its polish. 
It snatches colors from the faint light and ingrains them in lines 
and patterns of beauty. It scallops the edge of the leaf and 
paints the coral of the tulip ; it brings from the shapeless mass 
of the egg the bird that is perfect in beauty , it builds up the 
huge form of the elephant, and chisels the lineaments of him 
who is made in the image of God. Still it has all the character- 
istics of a purely natural force. If not as wholly blind as the 
lower forms of force, it is never more than instinctive, or som- 
nambulic in its ways, and will work at a wen as readily as at an 
eye. Except as we supply it with material it is wholly inde- 



PRESIDENT HOPKINS. 35 

pendent of our will, and builds up and takes down its structures 
in its own way. 

Like other natural forces, this of life is manifested only in 
connection with a particular kind of matter. This has always 
been known, but a sensation has been created of late, by discov- 
ering what kind of matter this is, and calling it protoplasm. This 
amounts to just as much as it does to analyze the matter of a 
crystal and call it carbonate of lime, and no more. Here, as in 
the crystal, analysis gives us only the corpse. Of the formative 
force we know nothing in either case ; but that it must be dif- 
ferent here is clear from the difference of the result. Before we 
had a crystal ; now we have an organization. This is a new 
thing, embodying the new idea of a whole made up of parts 
that are mutually means and ends ; and also of the perpetuation 
of the species while the individual perishes. Here is a radical 
difference, and the attempt to slur it is vain. So, also, is there 
a radical difference between the two divisions of that force which 
we call life. Under one, nutriment is taken directly from inor- 
ganic matter, and we have the vegetable ; under the other, it is 
taken from food prepared by vegetables, and we have the animal. 
In each of these cases we have not only a new mode of working, 
but a new idea and product, and these must be from something 
new in the cause. In that cause, whatever it is, is our life. 
Working in the blind way of a natural force, it builds up and 
takes down our bodies. In connection with it we come to the 
knowledge of ourselves. In connection with it we live this 
earthly life. It thus becomes our life — the life of our bodies — 
and this is the life that we are to lose, if need be, for Christ's 
sake. 

But what is the better life for the sake of which we are to lose 
the life of the body ? 

We here reach the phenomena to which the scalpel, the micro- 
scope, and the chemical test have no relation. We reach the 
life of self-consciousness, of the personality, of that in every 
man which he calls /, and which is, in truth, the man himself 
Of this life the phenomena are known immediately, as they are 
in themselves, and with a certainty greater than facts of obser- 



56 



DEATH. 



vation. Here we find unity. There is no unity in matter. It 
divides itself endlessly into molecules and atoms. But we are 
one. We know ourselves to be one being. Here, too, we find 
permanence. This we do not find in the matter of the 
body — we call it the same, as we do a river, but its particles flow 
like those of a river. I hold myself to be the same being I was 
thirty-four years ago, when I became president of this college. 
If I know anything, I know this. But the protoplasm is not the 
same. That has changed many times. How then can the pro- 
toplasm of to-day remember what happened to that of thirty- 
four years ago ? It would almost seem as if God had anchored 
this consciousness of permanence in a flowing stream of matter, 
to show that it could not be the product of that matter. 

In connection with this one, permanent, self-conscious being, 
we find thought, feeling, love, hate, will. We find the idea of 
God, of eternity, of moral law, of retribution. We find a power 
of comprehending ends, of freedom in choosing between them, 
and of acting, not blindly, or instinctively, but with a wisdom 
and adaptation in emergencies of which no natural power knows 
anything. In connection with this prerogative of freedom, we 
know ourselves as having the power of originating motion, of a 
true causation, of which we not only see no trace in nature, but 
the very conception of which is opposed to the definition of 
nature. We are, moreover, able to overlook and comprehend, 
as they are related to ourselves, all natural forces and to make 
them our servants. 

Through these powers it is, and their corresponding objects, 
that we find ourselves capable of living a permanent life of 
thought and of increasing knowledge ; a life of emotion, as of 
admiration, wonder, joy; a life of the social affections, and of 
rational love in the appreciation of all that has value or wor- 
thiness, and a life of voluntary activity in the pursuit of chosen 
ends. This life, endowed by the beneficence, and irradiated by 
the smile of God, we feel that we are capable of living forever ; 
and this is the life for the sake of which we are to lose the life 
of the body. — President Mark Hopkins, D. D. y LL. D. 






H. W. THOMAS. 37 

THE LAW OF GROWTH, DECAY AND DEATH. 

Were we for the first time to look out upon life, and study its 
pnenomena, we would find one of these to be growth ; that 
under a law ceaseless and silent there is an accretion of elements 
about the germinal principle ; and that the life-forms, both vege- 
table and animal, increase in size — some with more, some with 
less rapidity, some through a longer and some through a shorter 
period. Had we never seen anything of the kind before, the 
fact would at once fix our attention, and we should wonder to 
see the plant lift up its stem and throw out its branches, and 
the branches throw out their leaves and flowers. Had we never 
seen such things before, these facts would be called interesting 
and extraordinary. And so, were it not so common that it 
ceases to attract notice, it would be called wonderful to see a 
human being take on additional size, additional height, and 
breadth and weight, till the child has grown to be a man. If we 
still keep our minds on the phenomena of life, we find that 
another peculiarity is that the things which grow reach the point 
of maturity, where they cease to grow. ... If we watch the 
life-forces beyond the point of growth, we would find that 
there appeared in the plant, in the tree, and in the animal, 
evidences of what we call decay, premonitions of the wasting of 
vitality. There would come upon the leaf, the plant and the 
flower the seared edge, the changeful hue ; on the top-most 
boughs of the great tree the stems would begin to wither ; on 
the faces of our friends the lines of time are borne, and the silver 
hair takes the place of the once golden or auburn locks. Had 
we not witnessed this before, it would set us to asking : What is 
this ? What is that which grew, that which held its growth in 
mature life, and now begins to go down ? And here we would 
stand upon the threshold of the first great land-mark of destiny. 
The first point in destiny is death. 

We would not be satisfied with reaching this first point. Our 
inquisitive minds will keep going back and going deeper, and 
asking why this is so — whence came death ? And now, as I 
study death both in the lower and the higher realms of life, I am 
compelled to believe that the presence of death here is as 



38 



DEA TH. 



natural as the presence of life. It seems to be a part of the 
constitution of things, and not the result of any outcome of 
man's sinning. For I must feel, I must know, that death was 
present in our world ages before man's advent. We cannot 
turn the pages of geology without standing in the presence of 
overwhelming evidence that death was upon our planet long 
before man came. Therefore it suiely cannot be attributed to 
his sinning. There was a time when the life-forces teemed in the 
marshy lowlands and in the hot, humid atmosphere, where the 
life-forms that now exist could not have lived for a moment. 
Even before man came upon the earth, whole species of animal life 
had lived their day, filled their mission, and passed away. . . . 
Now we come to look at death in reference to man, and the 
question arises : Would he have been subject to this law of death, 
had there been no sinning ? We might be led, from our studies 
of the nature of man, to think it would be probable that he 
might be an exception to the general rule. He is an exception 
in many respects. He differs from every other product of nature 
in form, in feature and in the fact of his mental and spiritual 
endowments. Were we studying this subject as a speculation, 
and had we found that the law of death had dominion over every 
form of life below man, we might reach the conclusion that man 
would be an exception to this law. The reasoning from causa- 
tion would be in favor of the fact that he, having a divine nature, 
something related to God, would be an exception, and we should 
be justified in thinking that death came to the human family as 
a consequence of sin, or the violation of the law of his higher 
nature. — H. IV. Thomas, D. D. 

FRAILTY OF LIFE. 

We know that time is short, but none of us know how short. 
We know that it will not go beyond a certain limit of years , 
but none of us know how small the number of years, or months, 
or days may be. For death is at work upon all ages. The fever 
of a few days may hurry the likeliest of us all from this land of 
mortality. The cold of a few weeks may settle into some lin~ 
gering but irrecoverable disease. In one instant the blood of 



CHALMERS— FL O UR1N. 30 

him who has the promise of many years may cease its circula- 
tion. Accident may assail us. A slight fall may precipitate us 
into eternity. An exposure to rain may lay us on the bed of 
our last sickness, from which we are never more to rise. A little 
spark may kindle the midnight conflagration, which lays a 
house and its inhabitants in ashes. A stroke of lightning may 
arrest the current of life in a twinkling. A gust of wind may 
overturn the vessel, and lay the unwary passenger in a watery 
grave. A thousand dangers beset us on the slippery path of 
this world ; and no age is exempted from them — and from the 
infant that hangs on its mother's bosom, to the old man who 
sinks under the decrepitude of years, we see death in all its 
woeful and affecting varieties. — Thomas Chalmers. 

AVERAGE AGE OF MAN. 

Accurate approximations may be made from life insurance 
tables as to the average age of man. Of 100,000 persons, ten 
years of age, 90,000 will reach the age of 23, 70,000 the age of 
50, 50,000 of 65, 40,000 of 70, 10,000 of 82, 1,000 of 90, 100 of 
93, 10 of 95, and a solitary one of 100. Thus it appears that a 
child ten years old in fair health, has one chance in two of 
reaching the age of 65, two chances in five of reaching the age 
of 70, one in 100 of reaching the age of 90, and one in 100,000 
of rounding out a century. 

EXTREME AGE OF MAN. 
The great physiologist, Flourin, concluded that the natural 
extreme age of man is 100 years ; and his conclusions have been 
adopted by Faraday and others. The duration of life is measured 
by the time of growth, which in man is twenty years. The 
natural termination of life is five removes from this point; that is 
to say, man being twenty years in growing lives five times twenty, 
or one hundred years. The man who does not die of sickness, 
lives, everywhere, from eighty to one hundred years ; and it is 
only because he inherits or engenders disease by prodigality and 
excesses that he does not enjoy the full century of life that 
Providence has given him. Professor Flourin divides human life 
into infancy, youth, virility and age. Infancy extends to the 



4Q 



DEATH. 



twentieth year, youth to the fiftieth, because it is during this 
period that the tissues are firm ; virility from fifty to seventy-five, 
during which the organism remains complete ; and at seventy- 
$ve, old age commences. 

LONGEVITY BEFORE THE FLOOD. 

The Bible, which contains the only reliable history which has 
come down to us of the earliest times, records the ages of only 
ten persons who lived before the flood. They are as follows : 
Adam, 930 years ; Seth, 912 ; Enos, 905 ; Cainan, 910; Mahala- 
leel, 895 ; Jared, 962 ; Enoch, 365 ; Methuselah, 969 ; Lamech, 
y/y ; Noah, 950. If Enoch, whose life on earth terminated, not 
by death, but by translation, be excepted, the average of the life 
of the remaining nine was 912 years. The reason why the ages 
of these are given may be found in the fact that through them 
the genealogy of the Jews and of the Messiah was traced to 
their first parents. Others may have enjoyed an equal, or 
even greater length of days. Indeed there is no intimation in 
the sacred record that there was anything exceptional or 
extraordinary in their marvelous length of life. . . . After a 
few generations subsequent to the flood, the age of man reached, 
in its gradual decline, the present general limits — limits which 
have not materially varied for the last 3,500 years. 

W. H. De Puy y D. D. 

INCREASING LONGEVITY. 

Throughout the civilized world, the duration of human life 
has increased, and is steadily increasing with the advancement 
and diffusion of medical science. In the city of Geneva, in the 
sixteenth century, 1 individual in 25 died annually. For the 
eighteenth century, 1 in 34 ; at the present time 1 in 46. With 
us the mortality is greater. It is estimated at 1 in 40, the pro- 
portion of childhood being larger, and childhood being the 
period of the greatest mortality. In the British navy, among 
adults the mortality is only about 1 in 100. Ninety years ago 
it was 1 in every 10. In 1808, 1 in 30 ; 1836, 13.8 among 1,000, 
a diminution to less than a seventh of the rate in 1770. In the 



y. H. WYTHE 41 

American army, on its peace-footing, with a corps of medical 
officers not excelled by that of any other country, the mortality 
has been little over 1 in 300 per annum. In London, the mor- 
tality in the middle of the last century was 1 in 32. In the 
year 1838, the mortality was 1 in 36, as shown by the annual 
report of the registrar-general. Within the last forty years the 
mortality of Russia has been 1 in 27 ; Prussia, 1 in 36; France, 
I in 39.07 ; Holland, 1 in 39 ; Belgium, 1 in 43.01 ; England, I in 
53.07; Sicily, 1 in 32; Greece, 1 in 30; Philadelphia, I in 42.03; 
Boston, 1 in 45 ; New York, including emigrants, 1 in 37.83. 



CHAPTER II.— PHYSICAL DEATH. 

PHENOMENA OF DEATH. 

^.EATH occurs when the cause of life is removed. Life is 
JMj not synonymous with spirit, but is peculiar spiritual 
£-J][! influence on matter ; the result of the union of created 
spirits and elemental matter. When the spiritual 
essence ceases to act upon the matter of the organism 
we say the body is dead, and then disintegration and chemical 
decomposition succeed. There is a two-fold death — the death 
of the organism as a whole, called somatic, or bodily death, and 
molecular death, or the loss of vital activity in the molecules of 
the body. Life begins in a single molecule of bioplasm, and is 
propagated as a force more or less modified from molecule to 
molecule, or from cell to cell, as flame proceeds from one com- 
bustible substance to another, or as magnetism is disseminated 
by the action of a single magnet through one bar of steel after 
another. 

Molecular death is a continual phenomenon of life during its 
activity. It is arrested in dormant life, and is far from being so 
constant an attendant upon all the actions of the body as some 
have taught, yet it goes on with great rapidity and uniformity. 



42 DEATH. 

The bioplasts, or living particles, of each tissue in the body 
are changed into formed material, and then pass into decay, 
while other bioplasts take their places and keep up the active 
dance of life. When the spiritual cause, or origin, of vital phe- 
nomena is removed, the molecular activities of the body do not 
all cease at once, but gradually. Hair will continue to grow on 
a corpse, and the secretion of rattle-snake poison, or of other 
glands, continues for a short time after death. Indeed, the circu- 
lation of blood has been witnessed in a section of mouse's 
kidney some time after it had been removed from the body. 
Yet, uninfluenced by the energizing spirit, the vital activities 
gradually cease, and decomposition ensues. — Dr. y. H. Wythe. 

SOLEMNITY OF DEATH. 

(Written expressly for this volume.) 

Nothing is more commonplace than death — nothing more 
solemn. Its solemnity arises from these considerations : 

1. Death is certain — as a fact. "It is appointed unto men 
once to die." " The living know that they shall die." 

2. Death is uncertain — as to the time of its occurrence. 
There is " a time to die ; " but when it is to come, no mortal 
knows. The determined suicide may have his intention frus- 
trated, as in the case of Cowper ; the condemned prisoner may 
have his reprieve posted to him at the supreme moment. 
Purposes and plans for longevity may burst like bubbles in a 
moment. So uncertain is the time of our leaving this earthly 
scene. 

3. Death is universal. " For we must needs die, and are as 
water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again ; 
neither doth God respect any person." Death knocks alike at 
the rich man's palace and the poor man's cot. 

4. Death is irreversible. Two of our race — as well as the 
representative of our race, the Son of man — had the sentence 
reversed, so that though in a sense Enoch and Elijah may have 
died, and Christ certainly did die, yet the former in a moment, 
and the latter in a short time, were restored to bodily life, and 



T. O. SUMMERS. 43 

invested with immortality. We know of no other exceptions 
— unless we take into account those who shall be alive at the 
Second Advent of Christ, and who shall " be changed in a 
moment," as were Enoch and Elijah. Those who were resus- 
citated by miracle soon died again — their revivification was a 
miraculous event, designed to subserve special ends — in which is 
not included any communication concerning the mysteries of 
the other world, into which they were not probably initiated^ 
the return to their earthly existence being of course known to 
the Lord, the Life-giver. 

" Behold a man raised up by Christ 
The rest remaineth unrevealed : 
He told it not, or something sealed 
The lips of that Evangelist." 

5. Death is penal. " By one man sin entered into the world, 
*nd death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that 
all have sinned." " The body is dead because of sin." " The 
last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Infants die — not 
as the young of the inferior animals die — by a law of nature ; 
but because they belong to a sinning race. Neither Adam nor 
his descendants would have died but for sin. The glorious fact 
that the curse is transmuted into a blessing by the redemption 
of the Second Adam " who hath abolished death, and hath 
brought life and immortality to light through the gospel," does 
not disprove the point in question, but rather confirms it. If 
" grim death hath lost his sting," and " wears an angel's face," it 
is only toward infants who have never personally sinned, and 
believers, who have secured an interest in the inheritance of 
eternal life beyond the grave, procured for them by Him who is 
the Conqueror of death, and who is the Resurrection and the 
Life. — T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 

THE APPROACH OF DEATH. 

It is a dreadful thing to wait and watch for the approach of 
death ; to know that hope is gone and recovery impossible ; and 
to sit and count the dreary hours through long, long nights — 



44 DEATH. 

such nights as only watchers by the bed of sickness know. It 
chills the blood to hear the dearest secrets of the heart — the 
pent-up, hidden secrets of many years — poured forth by the 
unconscious, helpless being before you ; and to think how little 
the reserve and cunning of a whole life will avail, when fever 
and delirium tear off the mask at last. Strange tales have been 
told in the wanderings of dying men ; tales so full of guilt and 
crime, that those who stood by the sick person's couch have fled 
in horror and affright, lest they should be scared to madness by 
what they heard and saw ; and many a wretch has died alone, 
raving of deeds, the very name of which has driven the boldest 
man away. — Charles Dickens. 

SYMPTOMS OF DYING. 

If the patient lies on his back, his arms stretched out, and his 
legs hanging down, it is a sign of great weakness ; when he 
slides down into the bed it denotes death ; if, in a burning fever, 
he is continually feeling about with his hands and his fingers, 
and moves them up before his face and eyes, as if he were going 
to take away something before them, or on his bed covering, as 
if he were picking or searching for little straws, or taking away 
some speck, or drawing out little flocks of wool, all this is a 
sign that he is delirious, and that he will die. When his lips 
hang relaxed and cold ; when he cannot bear the light ; when he 
sheds tears involuntarily ; when in dozing some part of the white 
of the eye is seen, unless he usually sleeps in that manner, these 
signs prognosticate danger. When his eyes are sparkling, fierce, 
and fixed, he is delirious, or soon will be so ; when they are 
deadened, as it were, with a mist spread over them, or their 
brightness lost, it presages death or great weakness. When the 
patient has his nose sharp, his eyes sunk, his temples hollow, 
his ears cold and contracted, the skin of his forehead tense and 
dry, and the color of his face tending to a pale green or leaden 
tint, one may give out for certain that death is near, unless the 
strength of the patient has been exhausted all at once by long 
watchings, or by looseness., or being a long time without eating. 
— Hippocrates. 



DRAPER— POTTS. 45 

PROCESS OF DYING. 

The system of animal life dies before that of the organic. Of 
the former, the sensory functions fail first, voluntary motion next, 
and the power of muscular contraction under great stimulus 
still feebly continues. The blood, in gradual death, first ceases 
to reach the extremities, its pulsations becoming less and less 
energetic, so that, failing to gain the periphery, it passes but a 
little way from the heart ; the feet and the hands become cold as 
the circulating fluid leaves them, the decline of temperature grad- 
ually invading the interior. Some of the organic functions often 
continue for a time, particularly the secretion and the develop- 
ment of heat. — Prof. Draper. 

ACT OF DYING. 

Startling likenesses to relations and the self of former days are 
sometimes revealed when the wasting of the flesh has given 
prominence to the framework of the face. The cold of death 
seizes upon the extremities, and continues to spread. The very 
breath strikes chill ; the skin is clammy ; the voice falters and 
loses its own familiar tones — grows sharp and thin, or faint and 
murmuring, or comes with an unearthly, muffled sound. The 
pulse, sometimes previously deceitful, breaks down — is first 
feeble, then slow ; the beats are fitful and broken by pauses ; the 
intervals increase in frequency and duration, and at length it 
falls to rise no more. The respiration, whether languid or 
labored, becomes slow at the close ; the death-rattle is heard at 
every expulsion of air ; the lungs, like the pulse, become inter- 
mittent in their action ; a minute or two may elapse between the 
effort to breathe, and then one expiration, which has made " to 
expire " synonymous with " to die," and the conflict with the 
body is over. 

VERIFICATION OF DEATH. 

How can it be determined to a certainty, without waiting for 
putrefaction, whether death has actually taken place ? The 
question is of much importance, and has led to practical scien- 
tific investigation with satisfactory results. The Canada Lancet, 
for April, 1880, affirms that electricity is one valuable agent in 



4 6 DEATH. 

this direction. Two or three hours after the stoppage of the 
heart, the muscular system completely loses its electric excit- 
ability. If this agent be applied, therefore, say five or six hours 
after supposed death, and it produces no contraction of the 
muscles, death may be announced as certain, for no faint, nor 
trance, nor coma, however deep, can prevent the manifestation 
of electric muscular contractility. But electric apparatus is not 
always readily accessible, and simpler methods may be in requi- 
sition. Five thousand francs were once placed at the disposal 
of the French Academy of Medicine, to be awarded as a prize 
to the discoverer of a simple and easy process to determine, in- 
fallibly, the event of death. Four competitors shared in the 
award. Three of the methods may be named. I. If a piece of 
burning charcoal be brought in contact with the skin, in case 
of actual death, a blister will be raised, filled with vapor, and 
having no serosity nor appearance of reaction. 2. If a light be 
held to the top of a finger at a moderate distance, a blister will 
be formed ; if this contain serosity, there is life in the body. 3. 
If a portion of the body be rubbed briskly with a coarse, wet 
towel, or with the back of a knife, and then be left exposed to the 
air, in the course of a few hours the skin will have become trans- 
parent and like parchment, if death has really occurred. The 
occasion for applying these tests may not be frequent, but when 
it does occur, they are worth remembering. — Editor. 

REVIVIFICATION. 

Medical journals occasionally inform us of wonderful resusci- 
tations from apparent death brought about by the persistent 
use of artificial respiration. Dr. Fort, a French professor of 
anatomy, recently reported two cases to the Academy of Sci- 
ences, at Paris. One of these was that of a drowned man, 
who had been under water for twelve minutes before the body 
was recovered. An hour afterwards artificial respiration was 
commenced. In the course of hours the man showed signs 
of life, and was finally completely restored. Such instances 
may serve to impress us with the importance, when apparent 
death occurs from asphyxia, of persevering in any effort we 
may make to restore signs of life. 



PO TTS—ZSCHOKKE. 



47 



But people have wondered whether there were not really 
many cases of natural revivication. The very thought that a 
dead body should suddenly wake to life after burial is enough 
to make one to shudder. Even the mind of the great Wash- 
ington is said to have been troubled, in dying, lest he should be 
buried alive, and his last expression, " It is well," refers to the 
pledge of an attendant that the matter should receive attention. 
In removing bodies from old grave-yards, changes of position 
have been remarked. This proves nothing except awkward 
handling, or tedious jolting, between the house and the grave. 
In Munich, where all the dead are required by law to be kept 
"twice twenty-four hours," not "a single case of revival," ob- 
serves Dr. Hall, " has occurred in three hundred years." Any 
mind disturbed with such fears may be at rest The dead will 
not live again until Gabriel's trumpet blows the resurrection. — 
Editor. 

PAINLESSNESS OF DEATH. 

Whether dissolution causes suffering to the body, no one is 
able to tell. The spasmodic twitching of the muscles (which in 
many cases indeed does not take place) is distressing to behold, 
but is painless as a sensation. With the exception of falling 
asleep, nothing is so similar to the passing away in death as the 
sinking of a person into a swoon ; yet he who faints experiences 
little or no suffering before unconsciousness ensues. Perhaps, 
if artificial stimulants were not applied to restore to his nervous 
system the power of serving the soul, he would pass from the 
swoon into death without any further sensation. Such also is 
the condition of all those who, reduced to unconsciousness by 
excessive cold, are eventually restored to life. Their limbs are 
benumbed, their blood flows slower and slower, and finally the 
body stiffens as in death. The only sensation they experience 
is unconquerable drowsiness, and desire to lie down and rest ; 
and though they may be perfectly conscious that sleep is likely 
to end in death, they nevertheless brave it that they may enjoy 
the delight of sleep. It is thus established that the moment of 
dissolution has in it nothing that is terrible, that very few per- 



4 8 



DEATH. 



sons are clearly conscious of it, and that it is the imagination of 
survivors that invests it with horrors. — Zschokke. 

The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes 
all objects appear more lovely to the dying. — Richter. 

THE EXQUISITE SENSATIONS OF DYING. 

No case is remembered where persons have returned to life, 
after they were believed to have been dead, that the testimony 
has not been given to the effect that in the very act of departure 
the last remembered sensations were not merely pleasurable but 
exquisite. A titled lady exclaimed, " Why did you bring me 
back to earth ! " A drowned man passed away with strains of 
the most delightful music striking upon his ears. The man cut 
down from the gallows had a vision of entering Paradise, sur- 
rounded with all its glories. And now a lady, struck dead by 
lightning, as was supposed, says, " I feel quite sure that death by 
lightning must be absolutely painless, for I had a feeling of 
gently dying, dying away into darkness." Surely we do our- 
selves a great wrong, and the Merciful One who made death, 
also, to cherish the idea that it is " dreadful," — for a correct and 
substantiated physiology has demonstrated that in the hour and 
article of death from disease, for several minutes, and sometimes 
for hours before departure, the feeling of pain is an absolute im- 
possibility ; there may be an appearance of it, but it is a mank 
fest, unfelt muscular disturbance.— ^. W. Hall, A. M. y M. D. 

CERTAINTY OF DEATH. 

Almost all the truths of religion have been attacked by its 
enemies, but none of them has dared to say : " I shall not die ; " 
or if — what is possible — any one should say so, he would be 
convicted of falsehood by the experience of six thousand years, 
in every country of the globe ; he would be treated as a fool by 
every one, and very far from feeling certain of what he said, he 
would be afraid, and with reason, that death might strike him 
on the instant, and punish him for his daring rashness. 

Yes, we shall all die, great and lowly, rich and poor", none 
can avoid it. Samson with his strength, Solomon with his 




All my possessions for a moment of time." — Queen Elizabeth. 



PHILIPPE. 49 

msdom, Alexander with his victories, Caesar with his triumphs, 
Croesus with his riches, have not been able to avoid it ; it has 
respected none, and will respect none. What has become of so 
many men that have peopled this earth since the beginning of 
time ? They are reduced to dust. They are dead. What has 
become of those lovers of the world, those rich and powerful 
men of earth who seemed to be established here forever ? They 
are dead. History tells us, for she always closes the recital of 
personal deeds by mentioning the period of their death. 

What has become of those relations and friends with whom 
we ourselves have lived ? They are dead. 

And all from their graves cry out and repeat unceasingly — 
Yesterday for us, to-morrow for you. We have undergone the 
sentence passed upon guilty man, soon you too shall undergo it 
as well as we. 

" I die daily," says Paul. Let us say so with him. Every 

day we are dying, till the last of our days comes, when we 

cease to die. We feel that we are advancing to that inevitable 

goal ; that we are descending with a swiftness, ever increasing, 

towards the abyss, yawning for us at the close of our career. 

. Philippe. 
NO SECURITY FROM DEATH. 

It is no security to wicked men for one moment, that there 
are no visible means of death at hand. It is no security to a 
natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does not see 
which way he should now immediately go out of the world by 
any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect 
in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience 
of the world in all ages, shows that this is no evidence that a 
man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step 
will not be into another world. The unseen, the unthought of 
ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are 
innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over 
the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable 
places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their 
weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly 
unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight cannot discern them. 
4 



jo DEATH. 

God has so many different, unsearchable ways of taking wicked 
men out of the world and sending them to hell, that there is 
nothing to make it appear that God had need to be at the 
expense of a miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of his 
Providence to destroy any wicked man, at any moment. All 
the means that there are of sinners going out of the world, are 
so in God's hand, and so absolutely subject to his power and 
determination, that it does not depend at all less on the mere 
will of God, whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell, 
than if means were never made use of, or at all concerned in the 
case. 

Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own lives, 
or the care of others to preserve them, do not secure them a 
moment This divine providence and universal experience do 
also bear testimony to. There is this clear evidence, that men's 
own wisdom is no security to them from death ; that if it were 
otherwise we should see some difference between the wise and 
politic men of the world, and others, with regard to their liable* 
ness to early and unexpected death ; but how is it in fact ? 
" How dieth the wise man ? As the fool." 

Preside?tt Jonatlian Edwards. 

MAN'S PERSUASION OF THE CERTAINTY OF DEATH. 

The human mind never conceives, as a probability, the thought 
of exemption from mortality. True, " all men think all men 
mortal but themselves," yet this has reference to prolonged life, 
not to ultimate death. Since the confusion of Babel humanity 
has built no towers, hoping thereby to evade dissolution. Death 
was the only divinity to which the ancients never sacrificed, 
convinced that no human being could turn aside its stroke. 
Even the translation of Enoch and Elijah furnishes to no living 
mortal a ground of hope for immunity from the common lot of 
man. " There is no discharge in that war." 

" How strange is Death to Life ! and yet how sure 
The law which dooms all living things to die ! 
Whate'er is outward cannot long endure, 
And all that lasts, eludes the subtlest ey«." 



PO TTS—PHil. IPPE. 



51 



The living know that they shall die. The knowledge comes 
from life-long observation, from alarming experiences, if not from 
an innate consciousness of subjection to physical death. Job, 
the earliest Old Testament writer, gathers up the deep and abid- 
ing conviction of every rational mind when he declares, " For I 
know that thou wilt bring me to death, and to the house 
appointed for all living." This persuasion of mortality is 
intimately connected with the intuition of immortality ; for it 
would seem that if man were conscious that death ends all, his 
whole existence would be shrouded in gloom. He would fear to 
lie down to sleep lest he should never awake to consciousness 
again. He would tremble to go out into the world lest exposure 
to accident and disease should end his existence forever. But 
now, the immediate perception of endless being tempers the 
apprehension of early limited life, so that man goes about his 
work in the spirit of David when he prayed, " Preserve thou 
those that are appointed to die." — Editor. 

UNCERTAINTIES OF DEATH. 

Not only is death uncertain as to the hour of its arrival, it is 
equally uncertain as to the place, time and circumstances in which 
we must undergo it. 

Where shall I die ? Will it be in my bed ? Will it be in the 
exercise of duty ? Will it be where I now live, or in some other 
house or country? In truth, I know not. All is uncertain. 

Such a one was slain by the sword ; another was drowned, one 
fell from a height and was crushed ; this one died at table, this 
other while gaming ; one perished by the pestilence, and another 
by the hands of robbers. Thus death comes in many forms, 
and no one can know for certain in what way it will come to 
him. — Philippe. 

INEXORABILITY OF DEATH. 

Oh ! eloquent, just and mighty death ! Whom none could 
advise thou hast persuaded ; what none have dared thou hast 
done ; and whom all the world have flattered, thou only hast 
cast out and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far- 



52 



DBA TH. 



fetched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, 
and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hie jacet. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 

INSATIABILITY OF DEATH. 

" Why should man's high aspiring mind 

Burn in him with so proud a breath ; 
When all his haughty views can find 

In this world lead to death ; 
The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise, 

The rich, the poor, the great, the small, 
Are each but worms' anatomies, 

To strew his quiet hall." — Marvel. 

DEATH THE CHIEF OF CALAMITIES. 

Death is spoken of in Scripture as the chief of calamities, 
the most extreme and terrible of all those natural evils, which 
come on mankind in this world. Deadly destruction is spoken 
of as the most terrible destruction, I Sam. v. II ; deadly sorrow 
as the most extreme sorrow, Isa. xvii. 1 1 ; Matt. xxvi. 38, 
and deadly enemies as the most bitter and terrible enemies, Psa. 
xvii. 9. The extremity of Christ's sufferings is represented 
by his suffering unto death, Phil. ii. 8, and other places. Hence 
the greatest testimonies of God's anger for the sins of men in 
this world, have been by inflicting death : as on the sinners of 
the old world, on the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, on 
Onan, Pharaoh, and the Egyptians, Nadab and Abihu, Korah 
and his company, and the rest of the rebels in the wilderness, on 
the wicked inhabitants of Canaan, on Hophni and Phinehas, 
Ananias and Sapphira, the unbelieving Jews, upon whom wrath 
came to the uttermost, in the time of the last destruction of 
Jerusalem. This calamity is often spoken of as in a peculiar 
manner the fruit of the guilt of sin. Exod. xxviii. 43, " They 
that bear not iniquity and die." Lev. xxii. 9, " Lest they bear 
sin for it and die." So Numb, xviii. 22, compared with Lev. 
x. 1, 2. The very light of nature, or tradition from ancient 
revelation, led the heathen to conceive of death as in a peculiar 
Uianner an evidence of divine vengeance. Thus we have an 



ED WARDS— HER VE Y— BLAIR. 



53 



account, Acts xxviii. 4, that when the barbarians saw the 
venomous beast hang on Paul's hand, they said among them- 
selves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath 
escaped the seas, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. 

President Edwards. 

PEOPLE DYING CONSTANTLY. 

How thin is the partition between this world and another ! 
How short the transition from time to eternity ! The partition, 
nothing more than the breath in our nostrils ; and the transition 
may be made in the twinkling of an eye. While I am recol- 
lecting, many, I question not, are experiencing the tragical 
vicissitude. The eyes of that sublime Being, who sits upon the 
circle of the earth, and views all its inhabitants with one com- 
prehensive glance, even now beholds many tents in affliction — 
such affliction as overwhelmed the Egyptia?ts in that fatal night 
when the destroying angel sheathed his arrows in all the pride 
of their strength : — some sinking to the floor in their easy-chair, 
and deaf even amidst the piercing shrieks of their distracted 
relations ; some giving up the ghost, as they sit retired, or lie 
reclined under the shady arbor, to taste the sweets of the flowery 
scene; some, as they sail, associated with a party of pleasure, 
along the dancing stream, and through the laughing meads. 
Nor is the grim intruder mollified, though wine and music flow 
around ; some intercepted, as they are returning home ; and some 
interrupted, as they enter upon an important negotiation ; some 
arrested with the gains of injustice in their hands ; and some sur- 
prised, in the very act of lewdness, or the attempt of cruelty. — 
Rev. James Hervey, A. M. 

" Death's shafts fly thick ! Here falls the village swain, 
And there his pamper'd lord ! The cup goes round, 
And who so artful as to put it by ! " — Blair. 



54 



DEATH. 




CHAPTER III.— DEATH IN RELATION TO 
THE EARTHLY LIFE. 

THE DISTANCE OF DEATH. 

OW far from any human being is death ? This is not 
equivalent to asking when he will actually die. That 
may not be for years to come. But all that time how 
far off is death from him ? Nor far, only a step. "There 
is but a step between me and death." Death is always 
at just the same distance from every man, though all do not 
die at the same time, and some live to a much greater age than 
others. Death is as contiguous to childhood and youth as to 
manhood and old age. Facts are every day proving it. From 
no subject of human life, and from no point or period of it, is 
death even at a greater distance than can be measured by a 
step. David said what I have quoted of himself. It is just as 
true of all men, unless some are protected, as Hezekiah was, by 
a promise of God that he should live a number of years. David 
said it in a moment of panic. He might have said it in his 
calmest hour. It is no piece of extravagance ; it is a sober 
reality. It is plain matter of fact, that all we who live, live at 
precisely this little distance from death and no more. David 
said it in view of a particular danger. But there are a thousand 
dangers besetting every man, any one of which could justify 
the language. We sometimes seem to be nearer death than at 
other times ; and we are actually sometimes nearer dying. 
Every hour brings us nearer dying, but not nearer death. That 
is always close at our side — our companion through life. We 
are not merely tending towards a brink, over which ultimately 
we are to plunge, but we are all the time travelling on that 
brink. Our danger does not commence before we actually die, 
but it attends us all the way of life. There is not a point in the 



NE VINS— RALEIGH— HEMANS. 



55 



path which has not been so dangerous as to prove fatal to some 
travellers. — Rev. W. Nevins, D. D. 

SMALL SPACE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH. 

That is said of the mariner, in respect to his ship, that he 
always sails within four inches of death ; that may be said of 
the soul, in relation to the body, that it is always within four 
inches of eternity. If the ship splits, then the sailor sinks ; if 
our earthen vessels break, the soul is gone, plunged forever into 
the bottomless sea, and bankless ocean of eternity. This is the 
soul therefore that I desire to weep over, that shall preposterously 
launch into the deep, before he knows whether he shall sink or 
swim. — Divine Breathings. 

DYING BEFORE WE BEGIN TO LIVE. 

It was a sad speech of a dying king, Nondum coepi vivere,jam 
cogor vivendi finem facere, I must now die before I begin to live. 
It is the sad condition of many a dying man, that their work 
is to do when their hour is come ; when the enemy is in the 
gate, their weapons are to look for ; when death is at the door, 
their graces are to look for; when the bridegroom is come, 
their oil is to buy ; the pursuer of blood is upon them, and the 
city of refuge is not so much as thought of by them. In a word, 
the seven years of plenty are wasted, and no provision for the 
years of famine. Time is spent, and nothing laid up for eternity. 
I will therefore now finish the work I have to do, that to die 
may be the last work I have to finish. — Divine Breathings. 

" Of death and judgment, heaven and hell 
Who oft do think, must needs die well." 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 

THE HOUR OF DEATH. 

" Leaves have their time to fall, 
And flowers to wither at the north wind's breath, 

And stars to set — but all, 
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death ! 



56 



DEATH. 

" Day is for mortal care, 
Eve for glad meetings round the joyous hearth, 

Night for the dreams of sleep, the voice of prayer, 
But all for thee, thou Mightiest of the Earth ! 

" The Banquet hath its hour, 
Its feverish hour of mirth, and song, and wine; 

There comes a day for Grief's o'erwhelming power, 
A time for softer tears — but all are thine. 

" Youth and the opening rose 
May look like things too glorious for decay, 

And smile at thee — but thou art not of those 
That wait the ripened bloom to seiae their prey. 

" We know when moons shall wane, 
When summer birds from far shall cross the sea, 

When Autumn's hue shall tinge the golden grain- 
But who shall teach us when to look for thee ? 

" Is it when Spring's first gale 
Comes forth to whisper where the violets lie ? 
Is it when roses in our paths grow pale ? — 
They have one season — all are ours to die ! 

" Thou art where billows foam ; 
Thou art where music melts upon the air ; 

Thou art around us in our peaceful home," 
And the world calls us forth, and thou art there. 

" Thou art where friend meets friend, 
Beneath the shadow of the elm to rest ; 

Thou art where foe meets foe, and trumpets rend 
The skies, and swords beat down the princely crest." 

Mrs. F. D. Hemans* 

DEATH A BREAK IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 

As long as we live in the body we pass imperceptibly from 
one stage of existence to another. Death separates by an 
abrupt break this life from the next. The dissolution of the ie 
which united body and soul severs also the thousand threaos 
which bound us to the possessions and employments of this visi- 
ble world. We are separated from the world and cast upon 
ourselves. This life belongs to work; but the night cometh 
when no man can work. This life calls us to things without ; 



L UTHARD T— WESLE Y. 



57 



that night of rest leads us within. This life belongs to the 
duties and things of this world ; after death we belong to our- 
selves alone, and our world is our inmost self and our reminis- 
cences. Work is a benefit, but it is also a temptation. We 
flee from ourselves, not merely by surrendering ourselves to the 
distractions of pleasure, but by rushing into the turmoil of work. 
Death casts us back upon ourselves, and makes us tarry in our 
own presence. This world of the senses casts about our mind 
a motley veil in which we hide from ourselves. Death rends 
asunder this veil of the senses, and presents us unveiled to our- 
selves. Here the manifold voices of this world surge around us, 
and too often drown the voice of truth within us. Death leads 
into the world of voiceless silence, into which none of the sounds 
of this earthly life can penetrate, and in which we can hear 
nothing but the voice of our own heart and the accusations of 
our own memory. And who will be able to endure this ? They 
only who, even while in the body, have lived a spiritual life; 
who, in this deceptive world of sense, have submitted themselves 
to the jurisdiction of truth; who, in this perishing world, have 
lived as natives of the eternal world. — Chr. Ernst Luthardt. 

DEATH THE SEPARATION OF SOUL AND BODY. 

Death is properly the separation of the soul from the body. 
Of this we are certain. But we are not certain (at least in many 
cases) of the time when the separation is made. Is it when res- 
piration ceases ? according to the well-known maxim, Nullus 
spiritus, nulla vita : " Where there is no breath, there is no life." 
Nay, we cannot absolutely affirm this ; for many instances have 
been known, of those whose breath was totally lost, and yet 
their lives have been recovered. Is it when the heart no longer 
beats ? or, when the circulation of the blood ceases ? Not so. 
For the heart may beat anew ; and the circulation of the blood, 
after it is quite interrupted, may begin again. Is the soul sepa- 
rated from the body when the whole body is stiff and cold as a 
piece of ice ? But there have been several instances lately, of 
persons who were thus cold and stiff, and had no symptoms of 
life remaining, who, nevertheless, upon proper application, re 



58 



DEATH. 



covered both life and health. Therefore we can say no more, 
than that death is the separation of the soul and body ; but in 
many cases God only can tell the moment of that separation. — » 
Jolm Wesley. 

Every one might then readily imagine the state into which 
the dissolution of the body must plunge him, by conceiving of 
himself as stripped of all faculties and all emotions, but those 
that belong to the moral sentiments, and as so confronted with 
the unsullied brightness of the Divine Majesty. To die, is to 
come — denuded of all but conscience, into the open presence of 
the Holy One. — Isaac Taylor. 

THE PANG OF SEPARATION. 

Whoever left the precincts of mortality without casting a 
wishful look on what he left behind, and a trembling eye on the 
scene that is before him? Being formed by our Creator for 
enjoyments even in this life, we are endowed with a sensibility 
to the objects around us. We have affections and we delight to 
indulge them ; we have hearts and we want to bestow them. 
Bad as the world is, we find in it objects of affection and attach- 
ment. Even in this waste and howling wilderness, there are 
spots of verdure and of beauty, of power to charm the mind and 
make us cry out, " It is good for us to be here." When, after 
the observation and experience of years, we have found out the 
objects of the soul, and met with minds congenial to our own, 
what pangs must it give to the heart to think of parting forever ? 
We even contract an attachment to inanimate objects. The 
tree, under whose shadow we have often sat ; the fields, where 
we have frequently strayed ; the hill, the scene of contemplation 
or the haunt of friendship, become objects of passion to the 
mind, and upon our leaving them, excite a temporary sorrow 
and regret. If these things can affect us with uneasiness, how 
great must be the affliction, when stretched on that bed from 
which we shall rise no more, and looking about for the last time 
on the sad circle of our weeping friends ! How great must be 
the affliction, to dissolve at once all the attachments of life ; to 



LOGAN— WA TSON—REID— BLAIR. $g 

bid an eternal adieu to the friends whom we long have loved, 
and to part forever with all that is dear below the sun. — John 
Logan, F. R. S. 

We spend our years with sighing ; it is a valley of tears : but 
death is the funeral of all our sorrows. — Watson. 

THE FIRST DEATH. 

What a dark shadow spreads over the household when death 
for the first time has entered it! How must Adam and Eve 
have felt when they ascertained that Abel was dead, was slain — 
slain by a brother ! No doubt the first home had a grief which 
never left it. Then, when the first aged man died, how sad the 
household ! Living so many hundred years and then passing 
away, what a loss ! But exceedingly painful it must have, been 
when the tidings spread around that an infant had died. 
Nothing of this kind had happened before. All persons had 
lived to old age. Now for the first time a little child has 
breathed its last. What surprise must have seized the minds of 
friends and others ! Doubtless they tried to ascertain the cause 
of such a strange event ; doubtless they speculated as to whether 
such a thing would ever likely occur again. Time settled the 
question. Infants died. The first death in any family is sad- 
dening. A new event has appeared in our history; a new 
wound has been received in the heart; a new consciousness 
characterizes the soul. If the first and only child has died, the 
grief will be exceedingly painful. The one flower that bloomed 
beside our door is cut down ; the solitary light that burned in 
our dwelling is extinguished ; the immortal that tarried with us 
for an hour has gone away. — Rev. John Reid. 

AN ENEMY'S DEATH. 

Is there a man who, if he were admitted to stand by the 
death-bed of his bitterest enemy, and behold him enduring that 
conflict which human nature must suffer at the last, would not 
be inclined to stretch for the hand of friendship, to utter the 
voice of forgiveness, and to wish for perfect reconciliation with 



6q DEATH. 

him before he left the world ? Who is there that, when he 
beholds the remains of his adversary deposited in the dust, feels 
not, in that moment, some relentings at the remembrance of 
those past animosities which mutually embittered their life ? — 
" There lies the man with whom I contended so long, silent and 
mute forever. He is fallen, and I am about to follow him. How 
poor is the advantage which I now enjoy! Where are the fruits 
of all our contests ? In a short time we shall be laid together ; 
and no remembrance remain of either of us under the sun. 
How many mistakes may there have been between us ? Had 
not he his virtues and good qualities as well as I ? When we 
both shall appear before the judgment-seat of God, shall I be 
found innocent and free of blame, for all the enmity I have 
borne him ? " My friends, let the anticipation of such senti- 
ments serve now to correct the inveteracy of prejudice, to cool 
the heat of anger, to allay the fierceness of resentment. How 
unnatural is it for animosities so lasting to possess the hearts of 
mortal men, that nothing can extinguish them but the cold hand 
of death. Is there not a sufficient proportion of evils in the 
short span of human life, that we seek to increase their number, 
by rushing into unnecessary contests with one another? When 
a few more suns have rolled over our heads, friends and foes 
shall have retreated together ; and their love and their hatred be 
equally buried. Let our few days, then, be spent in peace. 

Hugh Blair. 

" The grave ! it buries every error — covers every defect — ex- 
tinguishes every resentment — From its peaceful bosom spring 
none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look 
down upon the grave of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious 
throb, that ever he should have warred with the poor handful 
of earth that lies mouldering before him ! " — Irving. 

THE STRANGER'S DEATH. 

" By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed ; 
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed ; 
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned, 
By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned." — Pope. 



HALL— GRAHAM. 6k 

THE DOMINION OF DEATH. 

Witnesses to the dominion of death surround us on all sidei, 
A constant dying, which touches the feelings of all, is ever 
taking place throughout the realm of nature. Those religions 
of the ancient world, which were deifications of nature, held 
funeral lamentations when the glories of spring disappeared, 
over the deceased favorite of the gods and of men. What was 
it but dying nature that they mourned ? 

Our feelings on this subject are not so vivid as theirs were \w 
those days of old ; yet we are not able wholly to banish the 
feelings of melancholy from our minds ; and the poets of our 
own times are ever singing dirges on the perishableness of earthly 
things: " Verg'dnglicJikeit wie rauschen deine Wellen!" ("Perish- 
ableness, how do thy waves roar ! ") 

But it is not the realm of nature alone which is subject to 
this law of death. We see it bearing rule also over that of 
history. What now remains of the magnificent works of man 
in past ages ? A few ruins, a little dust, the sport of the winds. 
It is amidst the rubbish-heaps of the desert that the researches 
of scholars into the history of the great empires of antiquity 
have to be carried on. We are everywhere treading, upon the 
dust of the past. 

And ourselves, however prosperous and happy our lives may 
have been, however long they may have lasted — an instant, and 
they are extinct. And what remains even of the most fortunate ? 
A handful of dust, moistened with a few tears. Such is our 
end. We, too, are passing away. Our life is a continual dying. 
— From the German of Luthardt, translated by Sophia Taylor. 

THE DEAD HUSBAND. 

Oh ! how earnestly I wished to go with him ! I was for the 
time insensible to my own loss ; my soul pursued him into the in- 
visible world ; and for the time I cordially rejoiced with the Spirit. 
I thought I saw the angel band ready to receive him, among 
whom stood my dear mother, the first to bid him welcome to 
the regions of bliss. I was desired to leave the room, which I 



62 DEATH. 

did, saying : " My docto\ is gone. I have accompanied him to 
the gates of heaven ; he is safely landed." I went into the 
parlor. Some friends came in to see me. My composure they 
could not account for. Our sincere and tender regard for each 
other was too well known to allow them to impute it to indiffer- 
ence. In the evening I returned to the bed-chamber, to take a 
last farewell of the dear remains. The countenance was so very 
pleasant, I thought there was even something heavenly, and 
couldn't help saying : " You smile upon me, my love. Surely 
the delightful prospect, opening on the departing soul, left that 
benign smile on its companion, the body." I thought I could 
have stood and gazed forever ; but for fear of relapsing into im- 
moderate grief, I withdrew after a parting embrace. I went to 
bed purely to get alone, for I had little expectation of sleep. 
But I was mistaken ; nature was fairly overcome with watching 
and fatigue. I dropped asleep, and for a few hours forgot my 
woes ; but, oh ! the pangs I felt on first awakening ! I could not 
for some time believe it true that I was, indeed, a widow, and 
that I had lost my heart's treasure ; my all I held dear on earth. 
It was long before day. I was in no danger of closing my eyes 
again, for I was at that time abandoned to despair, till recollec- 
tion and the same considerations which at first supported me 
brought me a little to myself. I considered that I wept for one 
that wept no more ; that all my fears for his eternal happiness 
were now over, and he beyond the reach of being lost ; neither 
was he lost to me, but added to my heavenly treasure more 
securely mine than ever.- — Isabella Graham. 

THE DEAD SON. 

He is gone, and we are going ! We could not have enjoyed 
him long, and shall not long be separated from him. He has 
probably escaped many such pangs as you are now feeling. 

Nothing remains but that with humble confidence we resign 
ourselves to Almighty goodness, and fall down without irrev- 
erent murmurs before the Sovereign Distributor of good and 
evil, with hope that though sorrow endureth for a night, yet joy 
may come in the morning. 



JOHNSON— ERSKINE. 63 

I have known you, madam, too long to think that you want 
any arguments for submission to the Supreme Will ; nor can 
my consolation have any effect but that of showing that I wish 
to comfort you. What can be done, you must do for yourself. 
Remember first that your child is happy ; and then that he is 
safe, not only from the ills of this world, but from those more 
formidable dangers which extend their mischief to eternity. 
You have brought into the world a rational being ; have seen 
him happy during the little life that has been granted to him, 
and can have no doubt that he is happy now. 

When you have obtained by prayer such tranquillity as 

nature will admit, force your attention, as you can, upon your 

accustomed duties and accustomed entertainments. You can 

do no more for our dear boy, but you must not therefore think 

less on those whom your attention may make fitter for the place 

to which he has gone. — Samuel Johnson, LL.D., to a bereaved 

mother. 

THE DEAD SON. 

I sincerely sympathize with you, my friend, in the loss of your 
only son. I have drunk deep of the same cup ; of nine sons, 
only one survives. From what I repeatedly felt, I can form 
an idea what you must feel. I cannot, I dare not say, weep 
not. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus, and surely he allows 
you to weep. But, oh ! let hope and joy mitigate your heavi- 
ness. I know not how this shall work for your good ; but it is 
enough that God knows. He that said, "All things shall work 
together for good to them that love God," excepts not from this 
promise the sorest trial. You devoted your son to God ; you 
cannot doubt that he accepted the surrender. If he has been 
hid in the chamber of the grave from the evil of sin and from 
the evil of suffering, let not your eye be evil, when God is good. 
What you chiefly wished for him, and prayed on this behalf, 
was spiritual and heavenly blessings. If the greatest thing you 
wished for is accomplished, at the season and in the manner 
Infinite Wisdom saw best, refuse not to be comforted. You 
know not what work and what joy have been waiting for him 
in that other world. — Dr. Erskine to a bereaved father. 



64 DEATH. 

THE DEAD DAUGHTER. 

There is a better world, of which I have thought too little. 
To that world she has gone, and thither my affections have fol- 
lowed her. This was Heaven's design. I see and feel it as 
distinctly as if an angel had revealed it. I often imagine that 
I can see her beckoning me to the happy world to which she 
has gone. I want only my blessed Saviour's assurance of par- 
don and acceptance to be at peace. I wish to find no rest short 
of rest in him. Let us both look up to that heaven where our 
Saviour dwells, and from which he is showing us the attractive 
face of our blessed and happy child, bidding us prepare to come 
to her, since she can no more visibly come to us. — William 
Wirt. 

THE FATHER'S DEATH. 

" The last day of my earthly pilgrimage was closing, 
And the end was peace. . . . My children knelt 
Around my bed — our latest family prayer. 
Listen — it is eleven striking. Then 
I whispered to my wife, * The time is short ; 
I hear the Spirit and the Bride say, " Come," 
And Jesus answering, " I come quickly." Listen.' 
And as she wiped the death-dews from my brow, 
She faltered, ' He is very near,' and I 
Could only faintly say, 'Amen, amen ! ' 
And then my power of utterance was gone : 
I beckon'd and was speechless : I was more 
Than ankle deep in Jordan's icy stream. 
My children stood upon its utmost verge, 
Gazing imploringly, persuasively, 
While the words, ' Dear, dear father,' now and then 
Would drop, like dew, from their unconscious lips. 
My gentle wife, with love stronger than death, 
Was leaning over those cold, gliding waves. 
I heard them speaking, but could make no sign ; 
I saw them weeping, but could shed no tear ; 
I felt their touch upon my flickering pulse, 
Their breath upon my cheek, but I could give 
No answering pressure to the fond hands press'd 
In mine. So rapidly the river-bed 
Shelved downward, I had pass'd or almost pass'd 
Beyond the interchange of loving signs 
Into the very world of love itself. 



BICKERSTETH—POLLOK. £| 

The waters were above my knees; they wash'd 

My loins ; and still they deepen'd. Unawares 

I saw, I listen'd — who is he who speaks? — 

A Presence and a Voice. That Presence moved 

Beside me like a cloud of glory ; and 

That Voice was like a silver trumpet, saying, 

' Be of good comfort. It is I. Fear not ! ' 

And whether now the waters were less deep 

Or I was borne upon invisible arms, 

I know not ; but methought my mortal robes 

Now only brush'd the smoothly gliding stream, 

And like the edges of a sun-set cloud 

The beatific land before me lay. 

One long, last look behind me ; gradually 

The figures faded on the shore of time, 

And, as the bell of midnight struck, 

One sob, one effort, and my spirit was free." 

Edward Henry Bickersteth, Af. A* 

THE YOUNG MOTHER'S DEATH. 

M We gathered round her bed, and bent our knees 
In fervent supplication to the Throne 
Of Mercy, and perfumed our prayers with sighs 
Sincere, and penitential tears, and looks 
Of self-abasement ; but we sought to stay 
An angel on the earth, a spirit ripe 
For heaven ; and Mercy, in her love, refused : 
Most merciful, as oft, when seeming least ! 
Most gracious when she seemed the most to frown! 
The room I well remember, and the bed 
On which she lay, and all the faces, too, / 
That crowded dark and mournfully around. 
Her father there, and mother, bending, stood; 
And down their aged cheeks fell many drops 
Of bitterness. Her husband, too, was there, 
And brothers, and they wept ; her sisters, too, 
Did weep and sorrow, comfortless ; and I 
Too wept, though not to weeping given : and all 
Within the house was dolorous and sad. 
This I remember well ; but better still 
I do remember, and will ne'er forget, 
The dying eye ! That eye alone was bright, 
And brighter grew as nearer death approached: 
As I have seen the gentle little flower 
Look fairest in the silver beam which fell 
Reflected from the thunder cloud, that soon 

5 



66 DEATH. 

Came down, and o'er the desert scattered Tar 

And wide its loveliness. She made a sign 

To bring her babe — 'twas brought, and by her placed. 

She looked upon its face, that neither smiled 

Nor wept, nor knew who gazed upon 't; and laid 

Her hand upon its little breast, and sought 

For it, with look that seemed to penetrate 

The heavens, unutterable blessings, such 

As God to dying parents only granted, 

For infants left behind them in the world. 

' God keep my child ! ' we heard her say, and heard 

No more. The Angel of the Covenant 

Was come, and, faithful to his promise, stood 

Prepared to walk with her through death's dark vale. 

And now her eyes grew bright, and brighter still, 

Too bright for ours to look upon, suffused 

With many tears, and closed without a cloud. 

They set, as sets the morning star, which goes 

Not down behind the darkened west, nor hides 

Obscured among the tempests of the sky, 

But melts away into the light of heaven." — Robert Pollok. 

DEATH IN LIFE'S MORNING. 

In his moral tillage, God cultivates many flowers seemingly 
c?nly for their exquisite beauty and fragrance. For when bathed 
in soft sunshine they have burst into blossom, then the Divine 
hand gathers them from the earthly fields to be kept in crystal 
vases in the deathless mansions above. Thus little children die 
— some in the sweet bud, some in the fuller blossom ; but never 
too early to make heaven fairer and sweeter with their immortal 
bloom. 

Verily, to the eye of Faith, nothing is fairer than the death of 
young children. Sight and sense, indeed, recoil from it. The 
flower that, like a breathing rose, filled heart and home with an 
exquisite delight, alas ! we are stricken with sore anguish to 
find its stem broken and the blossom gone. But unto Faith, 
eagle-eyed beyond mental vision, and winged to mount like a 
singing lark over the fading rainbow unto the blue heaven, even 
this is touchingly lovely. 

The child's earthly ministry was well done, for the rose does 
its work as grandly in blossom as the vine with its fruit. And 



WADSWORTH—CURR Y. 



6 7 



having helped to sanctify and lift heavenward the very hearts 
that broke at its farewell, it has gone from this troublesome 
sphere — ere the winds chilled or the rains stained it, leaving the 
world it blessed and the skies through which it passed still 
sweet with its lingering fragrance — to its glory as an ever-un- 
folding flower in the blessed garden of God. Surely, prolonged 
life on earth hath no boon like this ! For such mortal loveliness 
to put on immortality — to rise from the carnal with so little 
memory of earth that the mother's cradle seemed to have been 
rocked in the house of many mansions — to have no experience 
of a wearied mind and chilled affections, but from a child's joy- 
ous heart growing up in the power of an archangelic intellect — 
to be raptured as a blessed babe through the gates of Paradise 
— ah ! this is better than to watch as an old prophet for the car 
of fire in the valley of Jordan. — Charles Wadsworth, D.D. 

DEATH AT LIFE'S HIGH NOON. 

Ripe old age is the natural time to die, and continuous and 
protracted sickness accomplishes for its subjects much the same 
results ; and by a kindly law of our nature, with which grace 
may also co-operate, the fear of death is usually dissipated as 
that solemn transition is thus neared by steady and irreversible 
approaches. But the case is quite otherwise when at life's high 
noon, with its present activities and its purposes for the future, 
vvith laudable ambitions looking out into coming years, that 
seem to be burdened with promised successes. Then, indeed, 
is the announcement of death's near approach doubly terrible. 
The best of men have a strong, natural and instinctive love of 
life, which wasting sickness may destroy or the natural deca- 
dence of years wear out ; but while occupied in life's duties and 
interested in the enterprises of life, death is practically removed 
to the distant future ; and if then it comes suddenly and un- 
awares, it is always more than unwelcome. The crushing out 
of such high hopes, and present hasty preparations of the mind 
for a speedy exit from all present cares and concerns, constitute 
the severest possible test of one's faith. — Rev. Daniel Curry, 
D.D., LL.D. 



68 DEATH. 

DEATH AT LIFE'S EVENING HOUR. 

The aged disciple of Jesus — why should we wish to detain 
him? His work is done. Why desire to hold him back from 
the grave ? It is through the gate and grave of death that he 
passes to his inheritance above. Why be inconsolable at his 
departure ? He is not lost, neither is the light of his mind or 
heart extinguished. Why mourn as those who have no hope, 
beside his tombstone ? He shall not lie there long. He is 
planted there in the likeness of Christ's death, that he may rise 
with Christ to the resurrection of eternal life. Not many days 
shall roll over you ere you and they shall all rise again ; " they 
that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that 
have done evil to the resurrection of damnation." Rejoice, 
rather, when one you love, who is full of days and full of grace, 
sets like a sun behind the horizon of life. Rejoice, for he shall 
rise again ; and when that morning of the resurrection dawns, it 
will usher in a day that has no clouds, a day that has no sunset, 
and a day that is followed by no night of sorrow or of death.— 
W. B. Stevens. 

" Why weep ye then for him, who having won 
The bound of man's appointed years, at last, 
Life's blessings all enjoyed, life's labors done, 

Serenely to his final rest has passed ; 
While the soft memory of his virtues yet 
Lingers, like twilight hues, when the bright sun is set?" — Anm. 

*' When he is forsaken, 

Withered and shaken, 

What can an old man do but die?" — Thomas Hood, 

THE GENERATIONS OF MEN. 

The word generation reminds us that human existence is not 
like that of some other objects that come within our knowledge. 
Not, for instance, like the sun or stars, that shine on the same 
century after century ; not like an old mountain, that holds 
itself up age after age much the same; nor even like a river that 
goes on running in perpetual flow while the years are counted 
round. Generation ! It suggests the idea of coming, passing 



WM. ARTHUR, M. A. 69 

along, passing away, being succeeded, and so a perpetual succes- 
sion kept up. We are very apt to attach to the word various 
ideas, and some of them very vague. For instance, one of our 
most ordinary sayings is that the lifetime of a generation is 
about thirty years. Of course in the usage of the word it does 
not answer to anything. There is no external object that really 
answers to the mental idea of the word " generation," as so used. 
All that it means is that if you take the people born at a certain 
time, and mark when they die, including the child of one day 
old and the man of a hundred years, the average will be some- 
where about thirty. That abstraction of the mind it calls gen- 
eration. Another view of the term " generation " would be to 
take all the people born at a given time. In that sense, when a 
man has reached, say, twenty years of age, he would find that 
the greater part of his own generation was buried. If he lived 
to be fifty, he would find that the survivors of his generation 
were a small minority. If he lives to three-score years and ten. 
he finds that when he looks out for those who were born at the 
sade time as he, they are nearly all in the church-yard, and 
wherever he can find one of them above ground he looks upon 
an old man with white hair going down toward the grave. 

Another view, and perhaps the one that we generally enter- 
tain when we speak of " generation," is the people that are 
Jiving at the same time as we are ; they are our generation. 

Such generations continually come and continually go. We 
are very apt greatly to exaggerate the number of them that we 
can really count upon the earth. Nothing is more common than 
for us to speak of a hundred generations, and you will even hear 
people in rhetoric talk of a thousand generations. So it seems 
to us when we look back at that great cloud of human beings 
that have passed before us on the stage of earthly existence. 
But, after all, it is not so. When we begin by historical steps to 
trace back mankind to any ascertainable point, we find that we 
very soon reach the limits of our actual knowledge, and that all 
beyond is imagination and conjecture ; and we find that when 
we do come up to those first well-ascertained men, there are 
some things very remarkable in the comparison between thern 



7o 



DEATH. 



and us. When we look at the matters that require organization, 
co-operation, and organized society, and so on, we are immensely 
superior to them ; they could not make gas, they could not 
speak across the world by telegraph, they could not make an 
iron machine run for them forty miles an hour, and carry them 
while it is running ; they could not do a thousand things of this 
kind. But the superiority all lies there in matters requiring the 
experience of ages and the organization of multitudes. When 
you come to the individual man to measure him by the works 
either of his hand or his mind, take the pyramid that he builds, 
or the tower, or the temple, or the palace, and you will find 
that in physical power the individual was equal to you in every 
respect 5 and as to the power of his intellect in the very first pro 
ductions that you can trace to the borders of time, lying close 
upon the ocean, the first that you can discover, David, Moses, 
Homer, no man will rise and say that individually mind is 
greater now than as it was developed in them. The man, as a 
person, mentally or physically, appears, in our first knowledge of 
him, with all the human powers, and with those powers, whether 
mental or physical, in their grandest possible examples. But 
whatsoever is necessary for society and organization, gradually 
develops as the world grows older. And yet, after all, it is not 
old. David — why we seem to think of him as a being dwelling 
away in the remote clouds of a distance that our thought can 
hardly reach ; yet, after all, he is not so far away. At this mo- 
ment there are many men living upon the world a hundred 
years old ; there have always been men of that age ; so that if 
the boy belonging to Jesse of Bethlehem had gone out upon his 
father's farm, and following his father's sheep had begun to sing, 
"The Lord is my Shepherd," the lips of thirty-eight men might 
have handed that psalm down to your lips from his ; and if they 
were set along the street, and you clasped hands, thirty-eight 
hands might join yours with that of the king that reigned in 
Zion, and struck the harp that has echoed so long. He served 
his generation — that generation in that day; and we are standing 
in our generation, a good way down the stream of time from his 
point, and yet receiving the influences of what he did. 

William Arthur, M. A. 



POPE— BACON. j i 

Me let the tender office long engage 

To rock the cradle of reposing age ; 

With lenient art extend a mother's breath, 

Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death; 

Explore the thought, explain the asking eye, 

And keep awhile one parent from the sky." — Pope. 



TO WHOM DEATH ARRIVES GRACIOUSLY. 

Death arrives graciously only to such as sit in darkness, or 
lie heavy burdened with grief and irons ; to the poor Christian 
that sits bound in the galley ; to despairful widows, pensive pris- 
oners and deposed kings ; to them whose fortune runs back, and 
whose spirits mutiny ; unto such death is a redeemer, and the 
grave a place for retiredness and rest. 

These wait upon the shore of death, and wait unto him to 
draw near, wishing above all others to see his star, that they 
might be led to his place, wooing the remorseless sisters to 
wind down the watch of their life, and to break them off before 
the hour. — Lord Bacon. 

TO WHOM DEATH IS ODIOUS. 

It was no mean apprehension of Lucian, who says of Menip- 
pus, that in his travels through hell he knew not the kings of 
the earth from other men, but only by their louder cryings and 
tears : which was fostered in them through the remorseful mem- 
ory of the good days they had seen, and the fruitful leavings 
which they so unwillingly left behind them ; he that was well- 
seated, looked back at his portion, and was loath to forsake his 
farm ; and others, either minding marriages, pleasures, profit, or 
preferment, desired to be excused from death's banquet: they 
had made an appointment with earth, looking at the blessings, 
not the hand that enlarged them, forgetting how unclothedly 
they came hither, or with what naked ornaments they were 
arrayed. — Lord Bacon. 

Death finds not a worse friend than an alderman, to whose 
door I never knew him welcome ; but he is an importunate 
guest and will not say nay. 



72 



DEATH. 

DEATH A RELIEF. 

O Death ! the poor man's dearest friend, 

The kindest and the best ! 
Welcome the hour my aged limbs 

Are laid with thee to rest. 
The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow, 

From pomp and pleasure torn ; 
But O, a blest relief to those 

That weary — laden, mourn." — Robert Burns. 




CHAPTER IV.— DEATH VARIOUSLY 
DESCRIBED. 

DEATH BUT A POINT OF LIFE. 

EATH has for ages reigned on earth as king of terrors. 
The skull and cross-bones, ghastly insignia of his 
power, are as familiar to every eye as the crown and 
sceptre of earthly monarchs. The kingdom of Christ 
has been proclaimed eighteen hundred years, with its 
assurance of eternal life ; but the blind eyes of mankind have 
failed to open to its meaning ; the captives to the bondage of 
fear have been unable to comprehend the liberty freely offered 
to their acceptance. If the kingdom of Christ had come in its 
power into the hearts of all, the terrible king would have been 
dethroned long ago, and his crown and sceptre shattered and 
crumbled to dust. 

To those who live in the bondage of this fear, death seems 
the end of life. So shadowy and obscure to them is all beyond 
the grave, that it has no definite existence to their minds ; and 

imagination shapes only phantoms Yet, in 

reality, death is but a single point of life ; and that part of life 
which is beyond death is incomparably more vivid, more varied, 
more full of interest, than that which is now around us. — Mary 
G. Ware. 

In order to complete our perfect blessedness, nothing is further 



JOHN HOWE. 73 

wanting than to die. The certainty of death completes our 
assurance of heaven. Our greatest enemies cannot keep us from 
dying, and, therefore, keep us from Thee. Paul was right : " To 
die is gain." — John Howe. 



THE STREAM OF DEATH. 

" There is a stream, whose narrow tide 
The known and unknown worlds divide, 

Where all must go ; 
Its waveless waters, dark and deep, 
'Mid sullen silence, downward sweep, 
With moanless flow. 

" I saw where, at that dreary flood, 
A smiling infant prattling stood, 

Whose hour was come. 
Untaught of ill, it neared the tide, 
Sunk as to cradled rest, and died, 

Like going home. 

" Followed with languid eye anon, 
A youth diseased, and pale, and wan ; 

And there alone 
He gazed upon the leaden stream, 
And feared to plunge — I heard a scream. 

And he was gone. 

" And then a form in manhood's strength 
Came bustling on, 'till there at length 

He saw life's bound. 
He shrunk and raised the bitter prayer 
Too late — his shriek of wild despair 

The waters drowned. 

" Next stood upon that surgeless shore, 
A being bowed with many a score 

Of toilsome years. 
Earth-bound and sad, he left the bank> 
Back turned his dimming eye and sank, 

Ah ! full of fears. 

56 How bitter must thy waters be 
O Death ! How hard a thing, ah me i 



74 DEATH. 

It is to die ! 
I mused — when to that stream again 
Another child of mortal man 

With smiles drew nigh. 

" ' 'Tis the last pang,' he calmly said — 
* To me, O Death ! thou hast no dread ; 

Saviour, I come ! 
Spread but thine arms on yonder shore — 
I see ! Ye waters bear me o'er, 

There is my home.' " 

PEATH THE TERMINATION OF A VOYAGE. 

Among the tombs that have been uncovered in the long-hid* 
den city of Pompeii, there is one which has carved upon it a 
vessel just anchored, and the seamen furling the sails. It would 
be difficult to find a truer image whereby to represent the Chris- 
tian idea of what we call death. The voyage of this world's life 
over, the soul is anchoring in the heavenly home. Home to 
the homeless, rest to the weary, peace to the sorrowful, are all 
implied in the word " death ;" and yet we shroud it with gloom, 
and typify it with the revolting representations of fleshless bones. 
True, there are wrecks on life's ocean, voyages that terminate in 
despair ; but, as a general rule, it is the termination of the hap- 
piest voyage of life that we look upon most tearfully, while we 
are easily reconciled to the close of one that is worthless. There 
is, apparently, as little just appreciation of the relations and the 
value of life and death, in the minds of most persons, as there 
would be of voyages in one who should weep at seeing a noble 
ship come home in safety, and smile when a wreck was dashed 
upon the shore. — Mary G. Ware. 

" Death is the veil which those who live call life; 
We sleep and it is lifted." — Anony?nous. 

DEATH A HORIZON. 

Death is nothing else than the limit of human gazing. To 
man, living upon the low surface of the earth, the sun goes down 
and disappears ; but this comes to pass from the fact that man's 
horizon is a small circle fringed by a range of mountains or a 



SWING— WA TTS—FABER— CARPENTER. 75 

sea. But could man dwell in the upper ether he would perceive 
that the sun does not go down, but pours forth an ocean of light 
forever. Thus death is a human horizon, where the soul seems 
to go down to the gaze of mortals. Dark mountains and a vale 
of shadows intervene ; but to God, far above us, looking upon 
all his stars, and all his angels, and the children of men, the 
horizon which we call death disappears, and the soul shines 
always. " Unto him all live." — Prof. David Swing, 

DEATH A DARK ENTRY. 

Death to a good man is but passing through a dark entry, 
out of one little dusky room of his Father's house, into another 
that is fair and large, lightsome and glorious, and divinely enter- 
taining. Oh, may the rays and splendors of my heavenly apart- 
ment shoot far downward, and gild the dark entry with such a 
cheerful gleam, as to banish every fear when I shall be called to 
pass through. — Watts. 

DEATH A DARKENING AND A DAWNING. 

Death, after all, is a darkening and a disappearance of those 
we love, and we must be content to take it so. It is only a 
question, of more or less, where the darkness shall begin and 
what it shall eclipse first. To the others who have loved the 
dying and have gone before him, it is not a darkening but a 
dawning. Perhaps to them it is the brightest dawn, when it has 
been the most opaque and colorless sunset on the side of earth, 
— F. W. Faber. 

DEATH NOT WHAT IT SEEMS TO BE. 

It might be obvious even to us, that what we call death can 
not be in its experience what it seems to be to those who look 
on. You watch a friend departing from your door, and every 
step he takes transforms him upon your sight. Now he 
lengthens his shadow like a tree ; now he shrinks and curls to 
a point. Anon he expands into visibility again, and his outlines 
grow distinct as he shifts his position, as if he had changed his 
mind and were returning. ... At length he dwindle? into 



76 



DEATH. 



one point, and that point seems stationary. Then it flickers for 
a little, and at last goes out as by an explosion of the distance. 

This is your view. But it is not his experience 

So to a departing spirit, the room grows dark, while to you 
the lovely eyeballs fix and set themselves in straining blindness. 
The soul is passing from before those window-panes where you 
watched it in your courtings, where you caught its glance, and 
you say it has gone out. But to the soul the shutter has been 
closed, and yon seem to have retired from before that window. 
It glides into another room. The dying asks you, dreamily, why 
you put out the light. You look to see whether the pupils are 
expanded. You feel his clammy hand. Your hand feels cold 
to him. You are dying as you sit and sob. The world is dying 
to him as it rattles on, but he — he is alive as much as ever. It 
is for this reason that eternal truth has such a sovereign su- 
premacy at that crises - hour. If the departing were really 
changing to themselves as they change on your yearning gaze, 
Eternity would never seem so impossible, and celestial truth 
never so unsubstantial and so futile. The article of death itself 
would inspire that infidelity which now it neutralizes, and would 
paralyze the soul into that very idiocy of thought from which 
now it shocks and startles at. But life finds lives beyond, and 
living creatures everywhere alive to the living God. 

Hugh Smith Carpenter. 

NON-EXISTENCE OF DEATH. 

" There is no death ! The stars go down 
To rise upon some fairer shore ; 
And bright in heaven's jewelled crown 
They shine forevermore. 

" There is no death ! The dust we tread 

Shall change beneath the summer showers 
To golden grain of mellow fruit, 
Or rainbow tinted flowers. 

" The granite rocks disorganize 

To feed the hungry moss they bear; 
The forest leaves drink daily life 
From out the viewless air. 



LYTTOfr— SPENSER— BUNYAN-. 77 

:c There is no death ! The leaves may fall, 
The flowers may fade and pass away; 
They only wait through wintry hours 
The coming of the May. 

:c There is no death ! An angel form 

Walks o'er the earth with silent tread j 
He bears our best loved things away, 
And then we call them ' dead.' 

" He leaves our hearts all desolate, 

He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers; 
Transplanted into bliss, they now 
Adorn immortal bowers. 

" The bird-like voice, whose joyous tones 
Made glad these scenes of sin and strife 
Sings now an everlasting song 
Amid the trees of life. 

"And where he sees a smile too bright, 
Or heart too pure for taint and vice, 
He bears it to that world of light, 
To dwell in paradise. 

" Born unto that undying life, 

They leave us but to come again; 
With joy we welcome them — the same, 
Except in sin and pain. 

"And ever near us, though unseen, 
The dear immortal spirits tread ; 
For all the boundless Universe 

Is life — there are no dead !" — Lord Lytton. 



"And after all came life, and lastly death; 

Death with most grim and grisley visage seene, 
Yet he is naught but parting of the breath, 

He ought to see, but like a shape to weene 
Unbodied, unsoul'd, unheard, unseene." — Spenser. 

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

Now at the end of this valley was another, called the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death ; and Christian must needs go through 
it, because the way to the Celestial City lay through the midst of 
it. Now this valley is a very solitary place : the prophet Jere- 



78 



DEA TH. 



miah thus describes it : A wilderness, a land of deserts and pits, 
a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, a land that no 
man, " but a Christian, passeth through, and where no man 
dwelt." Jer. ii. 6. 

I saw then in my dream, that when Christian was got to the 
borders of the Shadow of Death, there met him two men, chil- 
dren of them that brought up an evil report of the good land, 
Numb. xiii. 32, making haste to go back; to whom Christian 
spake as follows : 

Whither are you going ? 

They said, Back, back ; and we would have you do so too, if 
either life or peace is prized by you. 

Why, what's the matter ? said Christian. 

Matter ? said they, we were going that way as you are going, 
and went as far as we durst ; and indeed we were almost past 
coming back, for had we gone a little farther, we had not been 
here to bring the news to thee. 

But what have you met with ? said Christian. 

Why we were almost in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
but that by good hap we looked before us, and saw the danger 
before we came to it, Psa. xliv. 19; cvii. 10. 

But what have you seen ? said Christian. 

Seen ? why the valley itself, which is as dark as pitch ; we also 
saw there the hobgoblins, satyrs, and dragons of the pit; we 
heard also in the valley a continual howling and yelling, as of a 
people under unutterable misery, who there sat bound in afflic- 
tion and irons;, and over that valley hang the discouraging 
clouds of confusion ; death also does always spread his wings 
over it. In a word, it is every whit dreadful, being utterly with- 
out order, Job iii. 5 ; x. 22. 

Then, said Christian, I perceive not yet, by what you have 
said, but that this is my way to the desired haven, Psa. xliv. 18, 
19; Jer. ii. 6. 

Be it thy way, we will not choose it for ours. 

So they parted, and Christian went on his way, but still with 
his sword drawn in his hand, for fear lest he should be assaulted. 

John Bunyan. 



CR OL Y—HORA CE—D ONNE. 79 

THE GENIUS OF DEATH. 

<* What is death ? 'Tis to be free, 
No more to love, or hope, or fear, 
To join the great equality ; • 

All, ail alike are humbled there. 
The mighty grave 
Wraps lord and slave ; 
Nor pride, nor poverty, dares come 
Within that refuge house — the tomb. 

* Spirit of the drooping wing, 
And the ever-weeping eye, 
Thou of all earth's kings art king : 
Empires at thy footstool lie, 
Beneath thee strewed, 
Their multitude 
Sink like waves upon the shore — 
Storms shall never rouse them more 

u What's the grandeur of the earth 
To the grandeur of thy throne ? 
Riches, glory, beauty, birth, 
To thy kingdom all have gone. 
Before thee stand ; 
The wondrous band — 
Bards, heroes, side by side, 
Who darkened nations when they died. 

" Earth hath hosts, but thou canst show 
Many a million for her one : 
Through thy gate the mortal flow 
Has for countless years rolled on. 
Back from the tomb 
No step has come ; 
There fix'd, till the last thunder's sound 
Shall bid thy prisoners be unbound." — George Croly 

Pale death approaches with an equal step, and knocks indis- 
criminately at the door of the cottage, and the portals of the 
palace. — Horace. 

Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when 
it comes. — Donne. 



go dea th. 

THE TIRELESS REAPER. 

"All flesh is grass." So wrote Isaiah, and David before him 
said of men, " They shall soon be cut down like the grass, and 
either as the green herb." Death is the great Reaper. He 
thrusts in his sickle, and, before his gigantic strokes, the human 
stalks go down. His sickle never dulls and his arm never falters. 
We have seen the reapers in the harvest-field wipe the sweat 
from their brows, and, sitting down upon the prostrate sheaves, 
rest awhile. But who ever saw Death rest? Who ever saw 
this grim Reaper sitting down on the fresh hillocks of the grave 
to recruit his jaded strength ? He faints not, neither is weary. 
— Editor. 

THE LAST WELCOME OF FRIENDS. 

Some time that last welcome of friends invades our dwelling 
to assure us how embosomed in divinity are our human affec 
tions and how imperishable. Who shall speak words more im • 
pressive than silence at such times, or, if speaking beside the 
dear dust, open the glorious hope of immortality? "I am t 7 te 
resurrection and the life." Surely the centuries intervening sin :e 
these quickening words were pronounced should have certifl v\ 
to every soul ere this its latent immortality. Ah! when shijl 
breathing men cease inquiring whether they breathe or not ? • x 
A. Bronson Alcott. 

A VISION OF DEATH AND ITS RESULT. 

There was once a German nobleman who led a foolish ant J 
dissipated life; drinking, gambling and neglecting his vassals, 
his family and his affairs. He had a dream, one night, which 
vividly impressed him. He saw a figure, looking at him with 
serious face, and pointing to a dial, where the hands marked 
the hour of four. The figure looked at him sadly, and said 
these words : "After four ! " and disappeared. The nobleman 
awoke in great terror, and thought that vision foreboded his 
speedy death. What could it mean ? It must mean that he 
was to die after four days, so he determined to "set his house in 
order." He sent for the priest, confessed his sins and received 




HOTHEKLESS. 



JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 8 1 

absolution. He sent for his family, and begged their forgive- 
ness for his offences against them. He sent for his man of 
business, and arranged his affairs as well as he could. He then 
waited for death. The four days passed, and he did not die. 
He then thought that perhaps the vision meant that he was to 
die after four weeks. He had a longer time for preparation ; so 
he devoted these four weeks to making atonement for all the 
evil he had done in the world, and doing all the good he could. 
The four weeks passed, and he was still alive. Then he thought 
it meant four months, and so he spent these four months in a 
more thorough repentance ; he did all the good he could in that 
time on his estates ; he found out all the poor and the sufferers, 
and helped them. The four months passed, and he did not die. 
Then he said, " It is plain that the vision meant four years T So 
during that four years, he gave all his thoughts and time to 
others ; did all he could for his neighbors, his vassals, the poor ; 
and also took useful and honorable part in public affairs. At 
the end of four years, instead of dying, he was chosen Emperor 
of Germany, and became one of the best emperors that ever was 
elected. The expectation of death had taught him how to live. 
It was natural that it should do so. — James Freeman Clarke. 

ESTATE OF A MAN AT DEATH. 

As the tree falleth, so it lieth ; and where death strikes down, 
there God lays out, either for mercy or misery ; so that I may 
compare it to the Red Sea. If I go in an Israelite, my landing 
shall be in glory, and my rejoicing in triumph, to see all my 
enemies dead upon the sea-shore ; but if I go in an Egyptian, if I 
be on this side the cloud, on this side the covenant, and yet go in 
hardened among the troops of Pharaoh, justice shall return in its 
full strength, and an inundation of judgment shall overflow my 
soul forever. Or else, I may compare it to the sleep of the ten 
virgins, of whom it is said, " They all slumbered and slept ;" we 
shall all fall into this sleep. Now, if I lie down with the wise, 1 
shall go in with the bridegroom ; but if I sleep with the foolish, 
without oil in my lamp, without grace in my soul, I have closed 
the gates of mercy upon my soul forever. I see then this life is 
6 



82 DEATH. 

the time wherein I must go forth to meet the Lord ; this is the 
hour wherein I must do my work, and that the day wherein I 
must be judged according to my works. I know not how soon 
I may fall into this sleep ; therefore, Lord, grant that I live every 
day in thy sight, as I desire to appear the last day in thy presence. 

Small space there is 'twixt life and death, we see; 
Yet on it hangs a double eternity. 

Divine Breathings, 

THE SLEEP OF DEATH. 

" His young bride stood beside his bed, 
Her weeping watch to keep; 
Hush ! hush ! he stirred not — was he dead, 
Or did he only sleep ? 

" His brow was calm, no change was there, 
No sigh had filled his breath ; 
O, did he wear that smile so fair 
In slumber or in death ? 

" ' Reach down his harp,' she wildly cried, 

'And if one spark remain, 
> Let him but hear " Loch Erroch's Side" 

He'll kindle at the strain. 

" ' That tune e'er held his soul in thrall ; 
It never breathed in vain ; 
He'll waken as its echoes fall, 
Or never wake again.' 

" The strings were swept. 'Twas sad to hear 
Sweet music floating there ; 
For every note called forth a tear 
Of anguish and despair. 

" ' See ! see !' she cried, ' the tune is o'er — 
No opening eye, no breath ; 
Hang up his harp ; he'll wake no more; 

He sleeps the sleep of death.' " — Eliza Cook. 

It is said of all mariners, that they always sail within four 
inches of death. Every one lives much nearer to death, and as 
six feet of air sustains us while living, so six feet of earth wil) 
contain us when dead. 



TALMA GE—McD UFF. 



83 



DEATH A CONQUEROR. 

If 1 were to call on you to give the names of the world's 
great conquerors, you would say, Caesar, Alexander, Philip, and 
the First Napoleon. You have missed the greatest. The men 
whose names have just been mentioned were not worthy of the 
name of corporal when compared with him. He rode on the 
black horse that crossed the fields of Waterloo and Atlanta, 
and his bloody hoofs have been set on the crushed hearts of the 
race. He has conquered every land and besieged every city ; 
and to-day Paris, London, St. Petersburg, New York, and 
Brooklyn are going down under his fierce and long-continued 
assault. 

That conqueror is Death. He carries a black flag and takes 
no prisoners. He digs a trench across the hemispheres and 
fills it with carcasses. Had not God kept creating new men, 
the world, fifty times over, would have swung lifeless through 
the air ; not a foot stirring in the cities, not a heart beating — a 
depopulated world — a ship without a helmsman at the wheel, or 
a captain on deck, or crew in the rigging. Herod of old slew 
only those of two years old and under ; but this monster strikes 
all ages. Genghis Khan sent five millions into the dust ; but 
this, hundreds of thousands of millions. Other kings sometimes 
fall back and surrender territory once gained ; but this king has 
kept all he won, save Lazarus and Christ. The last one escaped 
by Omnipotent power ; while Lazarus was again captured and 
went into the dust. What a cruel conqueror! What a bloody 
king ! His palace is a huge sepulchre ; his flowers the faded 
garlands that lie on coffin-lids ; his music the cry of desolated 
households ; the chalice of his banquet a skull ; his pleasure- 
fountains the falling tears of a world. — Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage- 

A TERRIBLE INVADER. 

Ah ! Death ! — thou unsparing foe ! — terrible invader ! — Sev- 
erer of the firmest of earthly bonds — causing, from the hour of 
the fall, one loud wail of suffering to arise from the households 
thou has swept — converting the world itself into one vast sep- 
ulchre — its teeming millions a long burial procession to the one 



$4 DEATH. 

long home ! — every heart beating its own " funeral march to 
the grave ! "— J, R. McDnff, D. D. 

THE DEAD WIFE. 

There is no sorrow so crushing, so overwhelming, so utterly 
irremediable as that for the dear dead wife, — the wife of your 
first love, of your buoyant, hopeful youth, with all its new exper- 
iences, its sweet revelations, its early struggles, its mutual aims, 
its hopes, its labors, and its fruitions. For long years together you 
worked side by side, hand in hand. She shared your troubles, 
and kissed away half their severity. She doubled your gladness 
by the pleasure it gave her to see you happy. And when in the 
lapse of time you had arrived at a position which enabled you 
to take life easy, and enjoy it as you had never done before, a 
heavenly hand takes her from your side, and transports her into 
the paradise of God, where you may not follow her now. You 
want to tell her how sweetly she died. How her friends gath- 
ered around her funeral bier, and in their affection strewed white 
flowers upon her bosom ; how lovingly and long they gazed on 
the dear familiar face, so beautifully calm in death, a heavenly 
sweetness so pervading every lineament as to give to it an angel 
seeming. You want to tell her, too, how the last, long, fond 
kiss almost broke your heart, and how you wanted to die when 
they covered her face from your sight forever. And then, as the 
weary weeks pass on, how busy memory brings up the forgotten 
past with its long array of loving acts, of spontaneous tender- 
ness, of self-abnegation, of sleepless vigilance, of instinctive 
solicitude ; how you would give your life away for one short 
interview. But it cannot be. She is an angel now, and in her 
heavenly purity waits in patient affection for the time when it 
shall be the Master's will to bring you to His feet and make of 
you an angel too. — W. W. Hall, M. D. 

DEATH'S FINAL CONQUEST. 

(These verses are said to have " chilled the heart " of Oliver Cromwell.) 

" The glories of our birth and state 

Are shadows, not substantial things ; 
There is no armor against fate, — 
Death lays his icy hands on kings ; 



SHIRLE Y—HER VEY. 85 

Sceptre and crowR 

Must tumble down, 
And in the dust be equal made 
With the poor crooked scythe and spade. 

** Some men with swords may reap the field, 
And plant fresh laurels where they kill ; 
But their strong nerves at last must yield,—- 
They tame but one another still ; 
Early or late, 
They stoop to fate, 
And must give up their murmuring breath, 
"When they, pale captives, creep to death. 

" The garlands wither on your brow, — 

Then boast no more your mighty deeds; 
Upon death's purple altar, now, 
See where the victor victim bleeds ! 
All heads must come 
To the cold tomb, — 
Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust." — James Shirley. 

THE WEAPONS OF DEATH. 

Legions, legions of disasters, such as no prudence can foresee, 
and no care prevent, lie in wait to accomplish our doom. A 
starting horse may throw his rider, and fling his soul into the 
eternal world. A stack of chimneys may tumble into the street, 
and crush the unwary passenger under the ruins. So frail, so 
very attenuated is the thread of life, that it not only bursts be- 
fore the storm, but breaks even at a breeze. The most common 
occurrences, those from which we suspect not the least harm, 
may prove the weapons of our destruction. A grape-stone, a 
despicable fly, may be more mortal than Goliath with his for- 
midable armor. Nay, if God command, our very comforts be- 
come killing. The air we breathe is our bane ; and the food we 
eat the vehicle of death. That last enemy has unnumbered 
avenues for his approach ; yea, lies intrenched in our very bosom, 
and holds his fortress in the seat of life. The crimson fluid, 
which distributes health, is impregnated with the seeds of death. 
Heat may inflame it, or toil oppress it, and make it destroy the 



$6 DEA TH. 

parts it was designed to cherish. Some unseen impediment 
may obstruct its passage, or some unknown violence may divert 
its course ; in either of which cases, it acts the part of a poisonous 
draught or a deadly stab. 

"Ah ! in what perils is vain life engaged! 
What slight neglects, what trivial faults destroy 
The hardest frame ! Of indolence, of toil 
We die; of want,of superfluity. 
The all-surrounding heaven, the vital air 
Is big with death." — Rev. James ffervey, A. M. 

DEATH IS ABRUPT. 

We put far away the evil day ; and therefore we are not duly 
impressed by the thought. But fourscore years are soon cut 
off, and we fly away ; and how uncertain is our reaching that 
lonely verge of life, where the flowery meadows and the golden 
corn-fields slope gradually down into the bare and stony beach 
that fringes the eternal sea. The coast of death to most is an 
abrupt precipice ; we are cut off in the midst of our days. — 
Macmillan. 

THE TIME OF EACH IS DRAWING NEAR. 

One spot there is now on the earth somewhere, waiting for us ; 
one pathetic little reach of land, six feet by two, which is to grow 
solemn with the charge of our dust lying in it in expectation of 
the final judgment. One moment there is drawing near on the 
dial which is to be awful with the weight of our solitary ex- 
perience, when it is to bear away the last breath from our 
nostrils. — Chas. S. Robinson, D.D. 

DEATH IS IMPUDENT. 

It would not seem so bold if it went into that fisherman's hut 
and took a life. But here it comes stumbling along, not stopping 
to look at the full barns, or to examine the olives, or to count 
the herds. It does not even knock. It goes in, as though it 
owned the whole place, and says, " Come ; you must go with 
me !" Death is the roughest of all constables, and makes an 
arrest without an explanation. The man says, " Wait until I 
get that new barn done." "No!" "Wait until I settle with 



TALMA GE—MA CM ILL AN. 87 

my men." "No!" "Wait until I can sell out, and get my 
estate in better trim." "No!" "Wait until I make my will." 
"No!" "Wait until I can get prepared." "No!" Death 
says, " I wait for nothing. I shall touch you twice, and then 
you will be mine ; once on the heart and then on the lungs. 
There ! the pulsation is quiet. There ! the breath is gone." 
" What shall we do with him ?" ask the neighbors. " I don't 
care what you do with him," says Death ; " I have done my 
work ; now you can do yours." 

Dr. Johnson, having ridden around the park of his friend, said 
to him, "Ah, my friend, these are things that make it so hard to 
die." 

What then ? Is elegance of surrounding no defence ? Can- 
not a man hide in his full barns or in his rich wardrobe ? No ! 
" They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the 
multitude of their riches — none of them can by any means 
redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him that he 
should live forever and not see corruption." Prince Albert 
breathes his last in Windsor Castle ; and Charles Dickens falls 
back senseless at his table at Gadshill ; and Albert Barnes 
expires in a Philadelphia parlor ; and Willie Lincoln falls asleep 
in the White House ; and the successful man of this text has 
his soul required of him in the night time. — T. De Witt Talmage. 

DEATH UNSUSPECTED. 

The king of terrors comes with noiseless step, shod with wool, 
stealthily, silently, with bated breath ; he is not seen, he is not 
heard, he is not suspected ; till all at once his cold shadow falls 
upon us, and his dark form stands between us and the light of 
the living world. We bear the seal of death ere we are con- 
scious of it ; and we become aware of our doom only when the 
gradual, secret fading of the bloom on the cheek, and the bright- 
ness in the eye, and the vigor in the frame, has reached its final 
palpable stage. No awful hand-writing appears on the wall, 
telling us in the midst of our rejoicings, as it told Belshazzar, 
its " Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin;" no solemn message from 
the unseen world comes to us, as it once came to Hezekiah; 



88 DEATH. 

" Set thine house in order, for thou shalt die and not live." 
Before the work of death begins, we know not which of our 
friends and acquaintances will pass away soonest. It may be 
the old and gray-haired, who have nothing left to live and hope 
for in the world ; it may be the sick who have lingered long on 
the perilous edge of death, and whose life has been endurance, 
not enjoyment ; or it may be the young and healthy, to whom 
death is a far-off cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, casting 
no shadow on their sunny horizon. It may be the fragrant rose 
or the thorny weed, the fruitful vine or the barren fig-tree, the 
heavenly-minded Christian or the worldly-hearted professor. 
Who is to be the first to receive the message to pass hence ? 
We know not ; an awful uncertainty rests upon that. — Macmillan. 

Death rides on every passing breeze, 

And lurks in every flower ; 
Each season has its own disease, 

Its peril every hour. — Heber. 

DEATH IS .MARKING HIS VICTIMS. 

There is not far from you that hidden certainty of death. I 
am speaking to some that I shall never speak to again. You 
are marked. You are going away, and my eye shall never rest 
on you again. There are some of you within a hand-breadth of 
the grave, and yet it doth not appear who it is. If I were to 
say that some sharp-shooter, hidden, would launch the fatal 
bullet into the midst of this assembly, with what terror would 
the whole of you rise ? and yet death stands with bow drawn 
back to the uttermost, and that arrow is just on the string that 
will speed to some of you. — Rev. Henry Ward Be ec her. 

DEATH LEVELS EARTHLY DISTINCTIONS. 

We will grant that were this life eternal, prudence and self- 
love, well understood, would require some indulgence of passion^ 
In this case there would be an immense distance between the 
rich and the poor, and riches should be acquired ; there would 
be an immense distance between the high and the low, and eleva- 
tion should be sought; there would be an immense distance 



SAURIN— DISRAELI. gg 

between him who mortified his senses and him who gratified 
them, and sensual pleasures would be requisite. 

But death renders all these things alike ; at least it makes so 
little difference between the one and the other, that it is hardly 
discernible. The most sensible motive therefore to abate the 
passions is death. The tomb is the best course of morality. 
Study avarice in the coffin of the miser ; this is the man who 
accumulated heap upon heap, riches upon riches. See, a few 
boards enclose him and a few square inches of earth contain him. 
Study ambition in the grave of that enterprising man ; see his 
noble designs, his extensive projects, his boundless expedients, 
all are shattered and sunk in this fatal gulf of human projects. 
Approach the tomb of the proud man, and there investigate 
pride ; see the mouth that pronounced lofty expressions con- 
demned to eternal silence ; the piercing eyes that convulsed the 
world with fear covered with a midnight gloom ; the formid- 
able arm, that distributed the destinies of mankind, without 
motion and life. Go to the tomb of the nobleman, and there 
study quality ; behold his magnificent titles, his royal ancestors, 
his flattering inscriptions, his learned genealogies, are all gone, 
or going to be lost with himself in the same dust. Study volup- 
tuousness at the grave of the voluptuous ; see, his senses are 
destroyed, his organs broken to pieces, his bones scattered at 
the grave's mouth, and the whole temple of sensual pleasure 
subverted from its foundation. — jfaques Saurin. 

ORIGIN OF THE SKELETON AS THE IMAGE OF DEATH. 

When the Christian religion spread over Europe, the world 
changed ! the certainty of a future state of existence, by the 
artifices of wicked, worldly men, terrified instead of consoling 
human nature ; and in the resurrection the ignorant multitude 
seemed rather to have dreaded retribution, than to have hoped 
for remuneration. The Founder of Christianity everywhere 
breathes the blessedness of social feelings. It is " Our Father! '* 
whom he addresses. The horrors with which Christianity was 
afterwards disguised arose in the corruptions of Christianity 
among those insane ascetics, who, misinterpreting " the Word 



go 



DEATH. 



of Life," trampled on nature ; and imagined that to secure an 
existence in the other world it was necessary not to exist in the 
one in which God had placed them. The dominion of mankind 
fell into the usurping hands of those imperious monks whose 
artifices trafficked with the terrors of ignorant and hypochon- 
driac " Kaisers and kings." The scene was darkened by pen- 
ances and by pilgrimages, by midnight vigils, by miraculous 
shrines, and bloody flagellations ; spectres started up amidst their 
tenebres ; millions of masses increased their supernatural influ- 
ence. Amidst this general gloom of Europe, their troubled 
imaginations were frequently predicting the end of the world. 
It was at this period that they first beheld the grave yawn, 
and Death, in the Gothic form of a gaunt anatomy, parading 
through the universe ! The people were frightened, as they 
viewed everywhere hung before their eyes, in the twilight of 
their cathedrals, and their " pale cloisters," the most revolting 
emblems of death. They started the traveller on the bridge ; 
they stared on the sinner in the carvings of his table and chair ; 
the spectre moved in the hangings of the apartment ; it stood in 
the niche, and was the picture of their sitting-room ; it was worn 
in their rings, while the illuminator shaded the bony phantom in 
the margins of their "Horce" their primers, and their breviaries. 
Their barbarous taste perceived no absurdity in giving action to 
a heap of dry bones, which could only keep together in a state 
of immovability and repose ; nor that it was burlesquing the 
awful idea of the resurrection, by exhibiting the incorruptible 
spirit under the unnatural and ludicrous figure of mortality drawn 
out of the corruption of the grave. — Isaac Disraeli. 

THE HEATHEN SYMBOLS OF DEATH. 

Though the heathen did not court the presence of death in 
any shape, they acknowledged its tranquillity ; and in the beau- 
tiful fables of their allegorical religion, Death was the daughter 
of Night, and the sister of Sleep ; and ever the friend of the 
unhappy. 

If the full light of revelation had not yet broken on them, it 
can hardly be denied that they had some glimpses and a dawn 



DISRAELI— TRENCH— SENECA. 



9* 



of the life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which 
describe the transmigration of the soul. A butterfly on the 
extremity of an extinguished lamp, held up by the messenger 
of the gods, intently gazing above, implied a dedication of that 
soul ; Love, with a melancholy air, his legs crossed, leaning on 
an inverted torch, the flame thus naturally extinguishing itself, 
elegantly denoted the cessation of human life ; a rose sculptured 
on a sarcophagus, or the emblems of epicurean life traced on it, 
in a skull wreathed by a chaplet of flowers, such as they wore 
at their convivial meetings, a flask of wine, a patera, and the 
small bones used as dice : all these symbols were indirect allu- 
sions to death, veiling its painful recollections. — Isaac Disraeli. 

To speak of death as a sleep is an image common to all lan- 
guages and nations. Thereby the reality of death is not denied, 
but only the fact implicitly assumed, that death will be followed 
by a resurrection, as sleep is by an awakening. 

Archbishop Trench. 

What is death, but ceasing to be what we were before ? We 
are kindled, and put out, we die daily ; nature that begot us 
expels us, and a better and safer place is provided for us. 

Seneca. 

HEATHEN PERSONIFICATIONS OF DEATH. 

The ancient artists have so rarely attempted to personify 
Death, that we have not discovered a single revolting image of 
this nature in all the works of antiquity. To conceal its 
deformity to the eye, as well as to elude its suggestion to the 
mind, seems to have been an universal feeling, and it accorded 
with a fundamental principle of ancient art — that of never per- 
mitting violent passion to produce in its representation distortion 
of form. This may be observed in the Laocoon, where the 
mouth only opens sufficiently to indicate the suppressed agony 
of superior humanity, without expressing the loud cry of vulgar 
suffering. Pausanias considered as a personification of death a 
female figure, whose teeth and nails, long and crooked, were 



02 DEATH. 

engraven on a coffin of cedar, which enclosed the body of 
Cypselus ; this female was unquestionably only one of the 
Parcoe, or the Fates, " watchful to cut the thread of life." 
Hesiod describes Atropos indeed as having sharp teeth, and long 
nails, waiting to tear and devour the dead ; but this image was 
of a barbarous era. Catullus ventured to personify the Sister 
Destinies as three Crones; "but in general," Winkelmann 
observes, " they are portrayed as beautiful virgins, with winged 
heads, one of whom is always in the attitude of writing on a 
scroll." Death was a nonentity to the ancient artist. Could he 
exhibit what represents nothing ? Could he animate into action 
what lies in a state of eternal tranquillity ? Elegant images of 
repose and tender sorrow were all he could invent to indicate the 
state of death. Even the terms which different nations have 
bestowed on a burial-place are not associated with emotions of 
horror. The Greeks called a burying-ground by the soothing 
term of Ccemeterian, or, " the sleeping-place ; " the Jews, who 
had no horrors of the grave, by Beth-haim, or, " the house of the 
living;" the Germans, with religious simplicity, " God's field." 
The Scriptures had only noticed that celestial being " the Angel 
of Death," — graceful, solemn, and sacred. 

DEATH BY DROWNING. 

It is believed that the rapidity and painlessness of death by 
drowning are due chiefly to the speedy obstruction of the cir- 
culation of the blood through the lungs. In ordinary asphyxia, 
by the simple deprivation of air, the blood throughout the body 
becomes charged with carbonic acid, and the arteries, as well as 
the veins, become filled with venous blood ; now, venous blood 
does not pass readily through the capillary vessels, and, when 
the accumulation of impurities has become so great as to pre- 
vent its passing at all, the circulation comes to a standstill. But 
the dreadful distress of suffocation comes on long before this 
point is reached. Now, when cold water is sucked into the 
lungs and comes in contact with their delicate and sensitive 
mucous membrane, it must cause an instant and powerful con- 
traction of the capillaries, and obstruct the current of blood from 



R. S. TRACY, M. D. 9^ 

Che right side of the heart, thus indirectly damming back the 
venous blood in the brain. This state of things brings on un- 
consciousness rapidly, preceded by the pleasurable tingling sen- 
sations, rapid succession of ideas, and flashes of light and color, 
so often described by persons who have been rescued from 
drowning. 

Drowning persons, then, die in different ways : 

1. By syncope, and asphyxia while unconscious. Some or 
these die instantly. 

2. By apoplexy (usually congestive), common in plethoric and 
aged persons, followed by asphyxia while unconscious. 

3. By asphyxia pure and simple. 

Deaths which come under the first two heads are rapid and 
painless, constituting probably a half, and, according to Taylor, 
three-quarters of all deaths by drowning. 

Deaths which come under the third heading we presume are 
not accompanied by physical suffering, for these reasons : 

1. Persons who have been resuscitated, after having become 
unconscious, declare that they have felt no pain whatever. 

2. Death is speedy. 

3. Persons who lose their presence of mind are so occupied 
with their struggles and mental agony that a slight degree of 
physical pain would be unnoticed. 

4. Swimmers, and persons who do not lose their wits, become 
so exhausted and chilled, that, when the final act comes, their 
powers make but a feeble resistance. And, in both cases, the 
passage of water into the lungs tends to bring on insensibility 
by obstructing the circulation before it is time for the agony of 
asphyxia to be felt. 

So that, in drowning, we have reason to believe, contrary to 
Taylor's opinion, that pure, uncomplicated asphyxia never 
occurs. 

If death by drowning be inevitable, as in a shipwreck, the 
easiest way to die would be to suck water into the lungs by a 
powerful inspiration, as soon as one went beneath the surface. 
A person who had the courage to do this would probably be- 
come almost immediately unconscious, and never rise to the 



94 



DEA TH. 



surface. As soon as tlw fluid filled his lungs, all feelings of 
chilliness and pains would cease, the indescribable semi-delirium 
that accompanies anaesthesia would come on, with ringing in the 
ears and delightful visions of color and light, while he would 
seem to himself to be gently sinking to rest on the softest of 
beds and with the most delightful of dreams. — R. S. Tracy^ 
M. JD. f in Popular Science Monthly. 

DEATH BY CRUCIFIXION. 

Death by the cross was the most terrible and the most dreaded 
and shameful punishment of antiquity — a punishment, the very 
name of which, Cicero tells us, should never come near the 
thoughts, the eyes, or ears, of a Roman citizen, far less his per- 
son. It was of Eastern origin, and had been in use among the 
Persians and Carthaginians, long before its employment in 
Western countries. Alexander the Great adopted it in Pales- 
tine, from the Phenicians, after the defence of Tyre, which he 
punished by crucifying two thousand citizens, when the place 
surrendered. Crassus signalized its introduction into Roman 
use by lining the road from Capua to Rome with crucified slaves, 
captured in the revolt of Spartacus, and Augustus finally in- 
augurated its general use, by crucifying six thousand slaves at 
once, in Sicily, in his suppression of the war raised by Sextus 
Pompeius. 

It was not a Jewish punishment, but the punishment inflicted 
by heathenism, which knew no compassion or reverence for man 
as man — on the worst criminals, on highway robbers, rebels and 
slaves 

The cross used at Calvary consisted of a strong post, which 
was carried beforehand to the place of execution, and of two 
cross-pieces, borne to the spot by the victim, and afterwards 
nailed to the upright so that they slanted forward, and let the 
sufferer lean on his stretched-out hands, and thus relieve the 
pressure of his body downwards. A stout, rough, wooden pin, 
in the middle of the upright post, supplied a seat of fitting agony, 
for the weight of the body would otherwise have torn it from 
the cross. — Cunningham Geikie, D.D. 



ROBERT BLAIR. 



SUICIDE. 



95 



If death were nothing, and naught after death; 

If when men died at once they ceased to be, 

Returning to the barren womb of nothing, 

Whence first they sprung ; then might the debauchee 

Untrembling mouthe the heavens ; then might the drunkard 

Reel over his full bowl, and when 'tis drained 

Fill up another to the brim, and laugh 

At the poor bugbear Death ; then might the wretch 

That's weary of the world, and tired of life, 

At once give each inquietude the slip, 

By stealing out of being when he pleas'd, 

And by what way, by hemp or steel: — 

Death's thousand doors stand open. Who could force 

The ill-pleased guest to sit out his full time, 

Or blame him if he goes ? Sure he does well 

That helps himself as timely as he can, 

When able. But, if there's an hereafter — 

And that there is, conscience, uninfluenced 

And suffered to speak out, tells every man — 

Then it must be an awful thing to die ; 

More horrid yet to die by one's own hand, 

Self-murder ! Name it not ; our nature's shame. 

Shall nature, swerving from her earliest dictate, 

Self-preservation, fall by her own act ? 

Forbid it, Heaven ! Let not, upon disgust, 

The shameless hand be foully crimsoned o'er 

With blood of its own lord ! Dreadful attempt, 

Just reeking from self-slaughter, in a rage 

To rush into the presence of our Judge ! 

As if we challenged him to do his worst 

And mattered not his wrath. Unheard tortures 

Must be reserved for such : these herd together ; 

The common damn'd shun their society, 

And look upon themselves as fiends less foul. 

Our Time is Fixed, and all our days are numbered ! 

How long, how short, we know not ; this we know % 

Duty requires we calmly wait the summons, 

Nor dare to stir till Heaven shall give permission: 

Like sentries that must keep their destined stand, 

And wait the appointed hour till they 're relieved. 

Those only are the brave that keep their ground, 

And keep it to the last. To run away 

Is but a coward's trick. To run away 

From this world's ills, that at the very worst 



g6 £>EA TH. 

Will soon blow o'er, thinking to mend ourselves 
By boldly venturing on a world unknown, 
And plunging headlong in the dark — 'tis mad ! 
No frenzy half so desperate as this. — Robert Blair. 

SUDDEN DEATH. 

Death itself, the falling asleep, has no bitterness. It is not a 
suffering, it cannot be so, for it is the end of all suffering, in 
which pain must already have ceased. It is the sickness alone 
which is distressing ; but sickness is not death, it only slowly 
introduces the latter. He whom God calls suddenly from this 
world is even spared the trials of a bed of illness. He dies 
without having tasted of death. Between his earthly and his 
heavenly life scarce a moment intervenes. Without care, with- 
out fear, without pain, he passes from this life into a better and 
higher existence, like one who passes from dreaming to waking. 
He knows nothing of the struggle between death and the in- 
stinctive love of life ; in him there is no longing to remain with 
his loved ones ; no repining for what he is about to leave ; no 
anxious looking forward to what awaits him. 

No, I do not look upon sudden death as a punishment from 
God, but as one of his sweetest boons. — From the German of 
Zschokke. 

So live that when thy summons comes to join 
That innumerable caravan that moves 
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not like the quarry slave at night 
Scourged to his dungeon ; but sustain'd and sooth'd 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, 
Like one that draws the drapery of his couch 
Around him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

W. C. Bryant* 

ALL DEATHS ARE SUDDEN. 

Now, for the most part, we discriminate what are called sud- 
den deaths from what is called death by course of nature. But, 
in point of fact, all death is sudden. It is the course of nature 
coming to a halt. However sluggishly the works, the wheels 
of that timepiece within your breast, be moving, at last hours — 



CARPENTER— HODGSON— G UTHRIE. 



97 



they still move. However low and weak and dying you may 
be — you still live. Death is a simultaneous check, and obsti- 
nate stiffness of refusal. There is a jerk and jar in the idea, as 
when a train of cars is forced to stop, and in proportion to the 
length of the train is the jarring shock. And it is just as hard 
to get out of the idea of life while you are alive, as to get 
out of a car while it runs. Death is a surprise to every man, 
and every man dies suddenly. — H. S. Carpenter. 

DEATH COMES AS A THIEF. 

That awful, that tremendous day, 

Whose coming who shall tell ? For as a thief 

Unheard, unseen, it steals with silent pace 

Through night's dark gloom. — Perhaps as here I sit, 

And rudely carol these incondite lays, 

Soon shall the hand be check'd, and dumb the moutk 

That lisps the falt'ring strain. — O may it ne'er 

Intrude unwelcome on an ill-spent hour ; 

But find me wrapt in meditations high, 

Hymning my great Creator. — Hodgson. 

UNCONSCIOUS DEATH. 

A man may be translated from this world into the next in a 
state of profound unconsciousness. As I have seen a mother 
approach the cradle and gently lift up the sleeping babe to take 
it to her own bed and bosom, so death, muffled in the cloud 
of night, and moving with noiseless step, has stolen on the 
sleeper, and borne him off to awake in heaven, and open his 
astonished eyes on the glories of the upper sanctuary ; and when 
his children, wondering what detains their father from the morn- 
ing meal, enter his chamber, the spirit is fled, and his lifeless 
form, like that of one who had done his work, lies in a posture 
of calm repose. Such a sudden transition brings an awful 
arrestment to a life of sin ; the sinner being like some wretched 
criminal, tracked to his hiding-place asleep in the arms of 
guilt, the fugitive is roused by rough hands, loud voices, and 
the flash of lanterns ; starting up, he stares wildly around, and 
turns pale to see his bed beset, door and window guarded — the 
officers of justice are come to drag him to prison. But to die 
7 



9 8 



DBA TH. 



and not to know it, not even to taste death, to be spared the 
bitter cup, to be saved the mortal struggle, to be borne across 
the deep, cold waters asleep in Jesus' arms, to be awakened out 
of nature's slumbers by the music of heavenly harps and the 
blaze of glory — what a happy close to a holy life ! — Thomas 
Guthrie, D. D. 

Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in our 
grave. — Bishop Hall. 

THE MYSTERY BEFORE US. 

See before us in our journey broods a mist upon the ground; 

Thither leads the path we walk in, blending with that gloomy bound. 

Never eye hath pierced its shadows to the mystery they screen, 

Those who once have passed within it, nevermore on earth are seen. 

Now it seems to stoop beside us, now at seeming distance lowers, 

Leaving banks that tempt us onward bright with summer green and flowers. 

Yet it blots the way forever; there our journey ends at last; 

Into that dark cloud we enter and are gathered to the past. 

Thou who in this flinty pathway, leading through a stranger land, 

Passeth down the rocky valley, walking with me hand in hand, 

Which of us shall be the soonest folded to that dim Unknown, 

Which shall leave the other walking in this flinty path alone ? 

Even now I see thee shudder, and thy cheek is white with fear, 

And thou clingest to my side as the dark mist comes sweeping near. 

" Here," thou say'st, " the path is rugged, sown with thorns that wound the feet, 

But the sheltered glens are lovely, and the rivulet's song is sweet. 

Roses breathe from tangled thickets ; lilies bend from ledges brown ; 

Pleasantly between the pelting showers the sunshine gushes down. 

Far be yet the hour that takes me where that chilly shadow lies, 

From the things I know and love, and from the sight of loving eyes." 

So thou murmurest, fearful one, but see, we tread a rougher way ; 

Fainter grow the gleams of sunshine that upon the dark rocks play; 

Rude winds strew the faded flowers upon the crags o'er which we pass ; 

Banks of verdure, when we reach them, hiss with tufts of withered grass. 

Yet upon the mists before us fix thine eyes with closer view, 

See beneath its sullen skirts the rosy morning glimmers through. 

One, whose feet the thorns have wounded, entered thither and came back 

With a glory on his footsteps lighting yet the dreary track. 

Boldly enter where he entered : all that seems but darkness here, 

When thou once hast passed beyond it, haply shall be crystal clear; 

Seen from that serener realm the walks of human life may lie 

Like the page of some familiar volume open to mine eye. 

Haply from the o'erhanging shadow thou may'st stretch an unseen hand 

To support the wavering steps that print with blood the rugged land. 



BR YANT— GE THIN. 



99 



Haply, leaning o'er the pilgrim all-unweeting thou art near, 

Thou may'st whisper words of warning and of comfort in his ear, 

Till, beyond the border where that brooding mystery bars the sight, 

Those whom thou hast fondly cherished stand with thee in peace and light. 

William Cullen Bryant. 




CHAPTER V.— VARIOUS SENTIMENTS 
RESPECTING DEATH. 

AVERSION FOR DEATH. 

! HE very thoughts of death disturb one's reason ; and 
though a man may have many excellent qualities, yet 
he may have the weakness of not commanding his senti- 
ments. Nothing is worse for one's health than to be in 
fear of death. There are some so wise as neither to 
hate nor to fear it ; but for my part I have an aversion for it ; 
and with reason, for it is a rash, inconsiderate thing, that always 
comes before it is looked for ; always comes unseasonably, parts 
friends, ruins beauty, laughs at youth, and draws a dark veil 
over all the pleasures of life. This dreadful evil is but the 
evil of a moment, and what we cannot by any means avoid ; 
and it is that which makes it so terrible to me ; for were it un- 
certain, hope might diminish some part of the fear ; but when 
I think I must die, and that I may die every moment, and that, 
too, a thousand several ways, I am in such a fright as you can- 
not imagine. I see dangers where, perhaps, there never were 
any. I am persuaded 'tis happy to be somewhat dull of appre- 
hension in this case ; and yet the best way to cure the pensive- 
ness of the thoughts of death is to think of it as little as pos- 
sible. It is best to submit to God, but some people cannot do 
it as they would ; and though they are not destitute of reason 
but perceive the^y are to blame, yet at the same time that their 
reason condemns them, their imagination makes their hearts 
feel what it pleases. — Lady Gethin. 



IOO DEATH. 

And thou art terrible — the tear, 
The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier; 
And all we know, or dream, or fear 
Of agony, are thine. — Halleck. 

DEATH IS APPALLING. 

Its dread attendants make it terrible — the cold death-sweat 
the quivering, failing pulse, the darkened vision, the dying agony s 
and the utter stillness, helplessness, and rapid decay of the body 
from which life has departed, never fail to inspire dread. Death 
is appalling when viewed only as the separation of the soul from 
the body. This mysterious blending of our physical and spir- 
itual natures, this union of matter and mind, seems here to con- 
stitute our very being. All we have enjoyed of life, our 
intercourse with the world, all the social intimacies, relationships, 
and endearments of life have come to us through and by virtue 
of this mysterious union. The separation of these elements, the 
bursting asunder of this bond of our being, leaving the body a 
lifeless wreck, a despoiled and wasted ruin, while the spirit 
departs to regions and to scenes unknown, cannot be realized 
without a pang. No darkness of superstition, no gloom of skep- 
ticism, can so cloud the very instinct of our being but that a 
tremendous anxiety will be awakened by an occasion so momen- 
tous ; while we behold the one element of our nature a " black- 
ened ruin," stricken down in the dust, the other, a trembling, 
flying fugitive, seems to be escaping away from us, we know not 
whither. 

But death is appalling, also, when looked upon as sundering 
the ties of human life, and breaking us off from all the scenes 
and interests of the present world. To think of bidding an 
everlasting farewell to earthly friends ; to think of mingling no 
more in the social scenes of life — of closing the eye forever upon 
the light of day, upon the glory of the earth, the grandeur of 
the heavens ; of listening no more to the sweet accents of affec- 
tion, or the sweet melodies of nature ; nay, to look upon our- 
selves as the silent, lonely tenants of the grave — the gloom of 
our habitation cheered by no companionships save such as make 
the grave terrible ; its darkness relieved by no ray of light ; its 



CLARK— BACON. IO l 

solemn silence broken by no sound ; to think of its gloomy sol- 
itude, its festering corruption, the rioting of worms in the 
dark caverns of the dead; to think of its chilling, freezing cold, 
from which no protection is given, the cold rain dripping down 
through the loosened earth above us, making damp the dismal 
bed where we slumber ! Alas ! these are the things that make 
death and the grave terrible. The scenes of life will go on in 
their accustomed course; childhood and youth, joyous and 
happy, shall sport along the streets and gambol over the fields, 
treading upon the very dust above us, unconscious of our doom. 
The festive board shall witness the gathering of friends, but we 
shall no more be numbered among them ; the current of human 
affairs will roll onward, but we shall be unmoved by the contend- 
ing emotions, the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows now felt 
by the living mass. What a gloomy, appalling spectacle does the 
grave present ! It is truly " the land of darkness and the shadow 
of death; a land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the 
shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as 
darkness."— Bishop D. W. Clark, D. D. 

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark ; and 
as that natural fear in children is increased with tales so is 
the other. Certainly the contemplation of death as the 
wages of sin and the passage to another world is holy and 
religious ; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. 
Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes a mixture of 
vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' 
books of mortification, that a man should think with himself 
what the pain is, if he have but his fingers' ends pressed or tor- 
tured, and thereby imagine what the pains of death are when the 
whole body is corrupted and dissolved ; when many times death 
passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb ; for the most 
vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that 
spake only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, 
" The pomp of death is more feared than death itself." Groans 
and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and 
blacks, and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible. 



102 



DEA TH. 



It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the 
mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death; 
and, therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath 
so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. 
Revenge triumphs over death ; love slights it ; honor aspireth to 
it ; grief dieth to it ; fear pre-occupieth it ; nay, we read, aftei 
Otho the Emperor had slain himself, pity, which is the tenderest 
of affections, provoked many to die, out of mere compassion to 
their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. . . . 

It is as natural to die as to be born ; and to a little infant, 
perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an 
earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood, who, 
for the time, scarce feels the hurt ; and, therefore, a mind fixed 
and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolors of 
death ; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is, " Lord, 
now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." — Lord Bacon. 

TO DIE, AND GO WE KNOW NOT WHERE. 

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where 

To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; 

This sensible warm motion to become 

A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit 

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 

In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice ; 

To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, 

And blown with restless violence round about 

The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst 

Of those that lawless and incertain thought 

Imagine howling : 'tis too horrible ! 

The weariest and most loathed worldly life 

That age, ache, penury and imprisonment 

Can lay on nature is a paradise 

To what we fear of death. — Shakespeare. 

THE DARKENING OF DEATH'S NIGHT. 

Black Horror ! speed we to the bed of death 
. Where one, who wide and far 

Hath sent abroad the myriad plagues of war, 

Struggles with his last breath : 

Then to his wildly staring eyes 

The spectres of the slaughtered rise ; 



SO UTHE Y—HERBER T—R CBINSON— COL 7 ON 103 

Then on his frenzied ear 

Their calls for vengeance, and the demon's yell, 

In one heart-maddening chorus swell : 

Cold on his brow convulsing stands the dew, 

And night eternal darkens on his view. — Robert Southey, 

He that lives ill, fear follows him. — Rev. George Herbert, A. M. 



THE TERROR OF DEATH AN INTELLECTUAL NOTION. 

It may be well to remember that death influences our human 
lot only as an intellectual notion. There is nothing in it which 
strikes back upon the fibre and substance of our existence. It is 
not like a blot of ink fallen in an open book, that it should stain 
the previous pages closed carelessly upon it ; it bears on the 
future alone. If we could and would keep it out of mind, it 
would not render us unhappy. The animals all around us die, 
just as we do ; but they give no evidences of being affected by 
the melancholy prospect. 

A lamb goes dumb to the slaughter, because it has no sense 
of apprehension. It is our idea of death which brings us our 
horror. The imagination invests it with its dreadful gloom. 

The Romans had thirty epithets for death ; and all of them 
were full of deepest dejection. " The iron slumber," " the eter- 
nal night," " the mower with his scythe," " the hunter with his 
snares," " the demon bearing cup of poison," " the merciless 
destroying angel," "the inexorable jailer with keys," "the king 
of terrors treading down empires." Some of them were these, 
the bitterness of which is indescribable. 

Charles S. Robinson, D. D. 

The hand that unnerved Belshazzar derived its most horrifying 
influence from the want of a body, and death itself is not for* 
midable in what we do know of it, but in what we do ?tot 

Colton. 

Death is less than death's continual fear. — Alleine, 



104 DEATH. 

IN WHAT SEASON IS DEATH MOST AFFECTING? 

I have had occasion to remark at various periods of my life, that 
the deaths of those whom we love, and, indeed, the contempla- 
tion of death generally, is (other things being equal) more 
affecting in summer than in any other season of the year. And 
the reasons are these three, I think: first, that the visible heavens 
in summer appear far higher, more distant, and (if such a sole- 
cism may be excused) more infinite; the clouds by which 
chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the blue pavilion 
stretched over our heads, are in summer more voluminous, 
massed, and accumulated in far grander and more towering piles ; 
secondly, the light and the appearance of the declining and the 
setting sun are much more fitted to be types and characters 
of the infinite ; and thirdly (which is the main reason), exuber- 
ant and riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind 
more powerfully upon the antagonistic thought of death, and 
the wintry sterility of the grave. For it may be observed, 
generally, that wherever two thoughts stand related to each 
other by a law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual 
repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these 
accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the thought of 
death when I am walking alone in the endless days of summer ; 
and any particular death, if not more affecting, at least haunts 
my mind more obstinately and besiegingly, in that season. 

De Quincey. 
PREFERENCE FOR TIME OF DEATH. 

(The author of this poem had his wish fulfilled — he died in the month of June. — Editor') 
I gazed upon the glorious sky, 

And the green mountains round, 
And thought that when I came to lie 

At rest within the ground, 
' Twere pleasant that in flowery June, 
When brooks send up a cheerful tune, 

And groves a joyful sound, 
The sexton's hand, my grave to make, 
The rich, green mountain-turf should break. 

A cell within the frozen mould, 

A coffin borne through sleet, 
And icy clods above it rolled, 

While fierce the tempests beat — 



W. C. BRYANT. 

Away ! — I will not think of these, 
Blue be the sky and soft the breeze, 

Earth green beneath the feet, 
And be the damp mould gently pressed 
Into my narrow place of rest. 

There, through the long, long summer hours, 

The golden light should lie, 
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers 

Stand in their beauty by, 
The oriole should build and tell 
His love-tale close beside my cell ; 

The idle butterfly 
Should rest him there, and there be heard 
The housewife bee and humming-bird. 

And what if cheerful shouts at noon 

Come from the village sent, 
Or song of maids beneath the moon 

With fairy laughter blent ? 
And what if, in the evening light, 
Betrothed lovers walk in sight 

Of my low monument? 
I would the lovely scene around 
Might know no sadder sight nor sound. 

I know that I no more should see 

The season's glorious show, 
Nor would its brightness shine for me, 

Nor its wild music flow ; 
But if, around my place of sleep, 
The friends I love should come to weep, 

They might not haste to go. 
Soft airs, and song, and light and bloom 
Should keep them lingering by my tomb. 

These to their softened hearts should bear 

The thought of what has been, 
And speak of one who cannot share 

The gladness of the scene; 
Whose part, in all the pomp that fills 
The circuit of the summer hills, 

Is that his grave is green ; 
And deeply would their hearts rejoice 
To hear again his living voice. — W. C. Bryant. 



I05 



I06 DEATH. 

PRESENTIMENTS OF DEATH. 

It is related of the nonconformist writer, Isaac Ambrose, that he 
had such a striking internal intimation of his approaching death, 
that he went round to all his friends to bid them farewell. When 
the day arrived which his presentiments indicated as the day 
of his dissolution, he shut himself up in his room and died. It 
is stated of Pendergrast, an officer in the Duke of Marlborough's 
army, that he had a strong foreboding that he would be killed 
on a certain day. He mentioned his conviction to others, and 
even made a written memorandum in relation to it. And the 
event was such as he had foretold it would be. Henry IV., of 
France, for some weeks previous to his being assassinated by 
Ravaillac, had a distinct presentiment, which he mentioned to 
Sully and other men of his time, that some great calamity was 
about to befall him. — Francis F. Upham, D. D. 

REVIVAL OF MEMORIES BY DEATH. 

It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come 
back, as it so often does when the dim eye is brightening with 
its last light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains the 
heart has ever known in its wastes should bubble up anew when 
the life-blood is growing stagnant. It is not strange that a 
bright memory should come to a dying old man, as the sunshine 
breaks across the hills at the close of a stormy day, nor that in 
the light of that ray the very clouds that made the day dark 
should grow gloriously beautiful. — Hawthorne. 

SOLITUDE OF DEATH. 

Even of the lowliest among us, it is true that we live alone ; 
but we become more conscious of the solitude as death ap- 
proaches : for we must meet that, as far as human fellowship is 
concerned, by ourselves. No one can pass within the veil along 
with us ; and no mortal can give us of his help while we make 
the transition. Our friends may wipe the damp from our brow, 
and ease our pillow, and whisper to us words of consolation. 
They may pray for us too, and beseech that God may " shield 
us in the last alarms ; " but they cannot give us their faith, or 



TA YL OR—ZSCHOKKE. 



IO7 



animate us with their hope, or inspire us with their courage. 
But when friends are powerless, God may be at our side, and he 
will be there, if in our lives we have served him, and in our 
deaths we cling to him. Oh, my hearers, will you think of 
this ? Your friends have done much for you, and been much 
with you in the past, but they cannot die for you, and they can- 
not die with you. That is an experience through which you 
must go without them ; and there is only One whose aid will be 
available in that supreme moment. He is the Alpha and Omega, 
who knows what death is, and who will come to meet you from 
the other side, when weeping children must part from you on 
this. 

" Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes ! 

Shine through the gloom ! and light me to the skies! 
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee. 
In life ! in death ! O Lord, abide with me ! " 

William M. Taylor, D. D. 
USE OF DEATH. 

Were we allowed to have a glimpse of the bliss of future 
worlds, our impatience to attain it would imbitter our life upon 
earth. How soon and how easily may not the barriers of life 
be overleapt ! How many thousand sufferers would not in mo- 
ments of impatience, forgetful of their duties, determine to leave 
this world. 

But it is God's will that we should work out our destination 
on earth, as far as it is to be fulfilled here ; that we should not 
voluntarily and capriciously put an end to our earthly career, 
but that we should pursue it to its furthest goal. 

Therefore, he placed as guardians before the closed gates of 
eternity fear and anxious doubt, and the awful stillness of death, 
and impenetrable darkness. These guardians drive back the 
human race, that it may pursue to the end its appointed path 
on earth. 

In spite of all the discomforts of life, in spite of our impatient 
longing to be reunited with the friends who have gone before 
us to our eternal home, the terrors that surround the portals of 
eternity repel us, and we continue our earthly journey with 
calmer spirits. — Zschokke. 



108 DEATH. 

O God ! it is a fearful thing 

To see the human soul take wing 

In any shape, in any mood : — 

I've seen it rushing forth in blood, 

I've seen it on the breaking ocean 

Strive with a swoln, convulsive motion. — Byron. 

CHOOSING DEATH. 

My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom when 
the head of a house died ? how he was dressed in his finest 
dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends' 
houses ; and each of them placed him at his table's head, and 
feasted in his presence ? Suppose it were offered to you in 
plain words, as rt is in dire facts, that you should gain this 
Scythian honor, gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive. 
Suppose the offer were this : You shall die slowly ; your blood 
shall daily grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last 
only as a rusted group of iron valves ; your life shall fade from 
you, and sink through the earth into the ice of Caina ; but day 
by day your body shall be dressed more gayly, and set in higher 
chariots, and have more orders on its breast, crowns on its head, 
if you will. Men shall bow low before it, stare and shout round 
it, crowd after it up and down the streets, build palaces for it, 
feast with it at their tables' head all the night long ; your soul 
shall stay enough within it to know what they do, and feel the 
weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of 
the crown-edge on the skull — no more. Would you take the 
offer, verbally made by the death angel ? Would the meanest 
among you take it, think you ? Yet practically and verily we 
grasp at it, every one of us in a measure ; many of us grasp at 
it in its fulness of horror. Every man accepts it who desires to 
advance in life without knowing what life is ; who means only 
that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and more for- 
tune, and more public honor, and — not more personal soul. 
He only is advancing in life whose heart is setting softer, whose 
blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering 
into living peace. And the men who have this life in them are 
the true lords or kings of the earth — they, and they only. — 
John Ruskin. 



y. H. POTTS. lQ g 

MAKING LIGHT OF DEATH. 

While it may be possible to cherish a too gloomy view of 
death ; to court too fondly those moods : 

" When thoughts 
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight 
Over thy spirit, and sad images 
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, 
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house 
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart ; " 

Yet, on the other hand, to treat the subject with levity, or an 
assumed unconcern, is not only unbecoming, but in the highest 
degree unnatural and unchristian. Death, in every view, is an 
important event. It is the most solemn crisis of human exist- 
ence. No man has a right to treat it with ostentatious indiffer- 
ence. 

To a lady afflicted with the dread of dying, Voltaire once 
wrote, "All things considered, I am of the opinion that one 
ought never to think of death. This thought is of no use what- 
ever, save to embitter life. Death is a mere nothing. Those 
people who solemnly proclaim it are enemies of the human race ; 
one must endeavor always to keep them off." But Voltaire 
comes to the dying hour himself, and what then ? His physi- 
cian testifies : " It was my lot that this man should die under my 
hands. ... As soon as he saw that all the means he had 
employed to increase his strength had just the opposite effect, 
death was constantly before his eyes. From this moment madness 
look possession of his soul. Think of the ravings of Orestes. 
He expired under the torments of the furies." It is further de- 
clared that he who beforehand declared the " thought of death 
to be of no use whatever," so convulsively clung to life that he 
offered literal fortunes to have its moments extended to him. 
" Living mockery and dying despair" are intimately connected; 
not less so are living reverence and dying hope. Make light of 
Death, and Death will make light of you. As the very essence 
of insignificance he will toss you into eternity. " The wicked is 
driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath hope in 
his death."— Editor. 



HO DEATH. 

MAN'S STRANGE CONDUCT IN RESPECT TO DEATH. 

Were any other event of far superior moment ascertained by 
evidence which made but a distant approach to that which 
attests the certainty of a life to come, — had we equal assurance 
that after a very limited, though uncertain period, we should be 
called to migrate into a distant land whence we were never to 
return, — the intelligence would fill every breast with solicitude ; 
it would become the theme of every tongue ; and we should 
avail ourselves with the utmost eagerness of all the means of 
information respecting the prospects which awaited us in that 
unknown country. Much of our attention would be occupied 
in preparing for our departure ; we should cease to regard the 
place we now inhabit as our home, and nothing would be con- 
sidered of moment but as it bore upon our future destination. 
How strange is it then that, with the certainty we all possess of 
shortly entering into another world, we avert our eyes as much 
as possible from the prospect ; that we seldom permit it to pene- 
trate us ; and that the moment the recollection recurs we hasten 
to dismiss it as an unwelcome intrusion. Is it not surprising that 
the volume we profess to recognize as the record of immortality, 
and the sole depository of whatever information it is possible to 
obtain respecting the portion which awaits us, should be con- 
signed to neglect, and rarely, if ever, consulted with the serious 
intention of ascertaining our future condition ? — Robert Hall. 

THE INQUIRY OF THE SOUL. 

On every side we are surrounded by that great mystery, 
death. Multitudes whom we once knew, some of them dearer 
to us than life, have disappeared from this scene of action. 
Where, what are they now? To-morrow, we too must enter 
upon that interminable existence. Where, what shall it be ? 
Compared with these questions all other inquiries and all other 
investigations are perfectly insignificant. We learn to know 
something of the life beyond the grave ; but the senses, reason, 
science, experience, afford not a single glimpse of the unseen 
world. Is it incredible that the eternal Father should vouchsafe 
us the knowledge which so unspeakably concerns us, and for 



FULLER— G UTHKIE—ZSCHOKRE. j j i 

which he has implanted in our souls such inextinguishable 
desires ? — Richard Fuller, D. D. 

HEATHENS SEEKING TO FORGET DEATH. 

I have read of a tribe of savages who bury their dead in secret, 
by the hands of unconcerned officials. No grassy mound nor 
stone guides the poor mother's steps to the corner where her 
infant lies. The grave is levelled with the soil ; and afterwards, 
as some to forget their loss drive the world and its pleasures 
over their hearts, a herd of cattle is driven over the ground, till 
their hoofs have obliterated every trace of the burial. Seeking 
to forget death and its inconsolable griefs, these heathen resent 
any allusion to the dead. You may not speak of them ; name 
her lost one in a mother's hearing, nor recall a dead father to 
the memory of his son. There is no injury they feel more deeply. 
Their hearts recoil from the thought of the dead. 

How strange, and unnatural ! No, not unnatural. Benighted 
pagans, their grief has none of the alleviations which are balm 
to our wounds ; none of the hopes which sustain us under a 
weight of sorrows. Their dead are flowers withered, never to 
revive — joys gone, never to return. To remember them is only 
to keep open a rankling wound, and preserve the memory of a 
loss which brought sore grief to the living, and no gain to the 
dead. [But most heathen nations have had glimmerings of 
immortality. — Editor^] To me, says Paul, to live is Christ, and 
to die is gain — they know nothing of this ; nor of the faith 
which associates the dead in Christ with a sinless world, and 
sunny skies, and shining angels, and songs seraphic, and crowns 
of glory, and harps of gold. Memory is but a curse, from 
which they seek relief by removing the picture from the cham- 
bers of their imagery, or turning its face to the wall. — Thomas 
Guthrie, 

SEARCHING QUESTIONS CONCERNING DEATH. 

If I were doomed to die this instant, could I lay my head on 
my death-bed pillow with the consciousness that I leave no one 
behind me in the world who has reason to repent of having 
been connected with me in any way ? Is there no one who, by 



II2 DEATH. 

word, deed, or example, I have led into sin? No one who 
needs blush in secret when remembering me ? Is there no one 
whom I have injured in the estimation of his fellow-citizens by 
envious gossip, by rash judgment, or by reckless sarcasm? Is 
there no one who is vexed when he hears my name, because I 
have maliciously injured his good repute through love of dis- 
paragement ? Is there no one from whom I have unjustly taken, 
and perhaps still keep back, what was his by right ? who has 
perhaps failed to demand it of me, because I have so cunningly 
managed that he did not know who was his despoiler ? Shall 
I leave to my heirs property so unrighteously acquired, and to 
which no blessing can attach ? Is there no one whose life I 
have embittered by my caprices, by my discontented, quarrel- 
some, domineering disposition ? Is there no one who may one 
day lament that I have not attended more carefully to his edu- 
cation ? Is there no one whom I have offended, and whose for- 
giveness I ought to seek? Is there no one who has injured 
me, and whom I still hate, or with whom I am still at variance ? 
— German of Zschokke. 

MEDITATION ON DEATH. 

Very soon all will be over with you here; consider, then, 
your state before God. To-day man is, and to-morrow he is 
gone. 

But when he is taken out of sight he quickly passes also out 
of mind. 

In every thought and act you ought so to hold yourself as 
if you were going to die this very day. 

If you had a good conscience you would not much fear death. 

It would be more to the purpose to shun sin than to flee 
from death. 

What profit is it for us to live long, when we make such a 
poor use of our time ? 

Many reckon how many years it is since their conversion, 
yet often there is but small fruit of their amendment. 

If it is fearful to die, perhaps to live long will be more 
dangerous. 



THOMAS A' KEMP IS. Hj 

Blessed is he who has always before his eyes the hour of 
death, and daily disposes himself for death. 

If you have seen any one die, remember that you will pass 
through the same ordeal. 

When it is morning, think that you may not see the evening ; 
and when it is evening, do not venture to make certain of 
reaching another morning. 

Always then be ready, and so live that death may not 
find you unprepared. Many die suddenly and unexpectedly 
— " For the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think 
not." 

When that last hour shall have come, you will begin to feel 
very differently about all your past life, and to grieve greatly at 
your negligence and remissness. 

Oh, how happy and wise is he who now endeavors to be- 
come in life such as he would wish to be found at the hour of 
death ! 

Perfect contempt of the world, fervent desire of advancing 
in virtues, love of discipline, labor of penitence, readiness of 
obedience, denial of self, and endurance of any adversity for 
the love of Christ, will produce in us great confidence that we 
shall die happily. 

When you are well you are able to do many good works, but 
I do not know what you can do when you are ill. 

Few are made better and reformed by sickness ; so those 
who are always moving from place to place seldom become 
holy. 

The time will come when you will desire one day or one 
hour in which to amend, and I know not whether it will be 
granted you. 

Oh, dearest friend, from what peril may you deliver yourself, 
from what terror may you rescue yourself by having at all 
times a due fear and anticipation of death ? 

Strive now so to live that you may be able in the hour of 
death to rejoice rather than to fear. 

Learn now to die to the world that you may then begin to 
live with Christ. — Thomas A Kempis. 



114 DEATH. 

CONTEMPLATING DEATH. 

Yes, 'tis the hand 
Of death I feel press heavy on my vitals, 
Slow sapping the warm current of existence. 
My moments now are few — the sand of life 
Ebbs fastly to its finish. Yet a little, 
And the last fleeting particle will fall 
Silent, unseen, unnoticed, unlamented. 
Come then, sad Thought, and let us meditate, 
While meditate we may. We have now 
But a small portion of what men call time 
To hold communion ; for even now the knife, 
The separating knife, I feel divide 
The tender bond that binds my soul to earth. 
Yes, I must die — I feel that I must die ; 
And though to me has life been dark and dreary, 
Though hope for me has smiled but to deceive, 
And disappointment still pursued her blandishments, 
Yet do I feel my soul recoil within me 
As I contemplate the dim gulf of death, 
The shuddering void, the awful blank — futurity. 
Ay, I had planned full many a sanguine scheme 
Of earthly happiness — romantic schemes, 
And fraught with loveliness ; and it is hard 
To feel the hand of death arrest one's steps, 
Throw a chill blight o'er all one's budding hopes, 
And hurl one's soul untimely to the shades, 
Lost in the gaping gulf of blank oblivion. 
Fifty years hence, and who will hear of Henry ? 
Oh ! none ; another busy brood of beings 
Will shoot up in the interim, and none 
Will hold him in remembrance. I shall sink 
As sinks a stranger in the crowded streets 
Of busy London ! Some short bustles caused, 
A few inquiries, and the crowds close in, 
And all's forgotten. — Henry Kirke White. 

PREPARATION FOR DEATH. 

A state of preparation for death implies much ; which, how- 
ever, is soon told. It presupposes a thorough conviction and 
hearty repentance of sin ; a clear sense of the divine favor re- 
ceived through faith in the blood of Christ, accompanied by the 
direct witness of the Holy Spirit; the present enjoyment of this 
evidence, to the exclusion of unbelief, the dominion of sin, of all 



MORRIS— SCRIVER. j T 5 

angry or bitter feelings, the wilful neglect of any known duty, 
and, in a word, whatever is contrary to the love of God and 
man. — Bishop T. A. Morns. 

EVERYTHING DEPENDS UPON IT. 

In regard to the termination of life, that which should concern 
us most is to be prepared for it. Whether we sink under slowly 
wasting disease, or break with sickness in a day — whether we 
die at home, surrounded with family and friends, or abroad, 
amidst strangers, or entirely alone, is not material ; but every- 
thing depends on dying in Christ, and being saved with the 
power of an endless life. A few years ago a young man in the 
city of New Orleans, whose friends had assembled to witness 
his departure from this world, and catch the last whispers that 
might fall from his quivering lips, on reviewing the countless 
dangers through which he had passed, and surveying the crown 
of life, then full in view, amidst the agonies of death, exclaimed, 
"I am safe!" That young man was a Christian, and knew 
whom he had believed. Jesus has vanquished death. All that 
trust in Him are safe. — Bishop T. A. Morris. 

READY FOR DEATH. 

The Christian at his death should not be like the child who 
is forced by the rod to quit his play, but like the one who is 
wearied of it, and willing to go to bed. Neither ought he to be 
like the mariner, whose vessel, by the violence of the tempest, 
is drifted from the shore, tossed to and fro upon the ocean, and 
at last suffers wreck and destruction, but like one who is ready 
for the voyage, and the moment the wind is favorable, cheer- 
fully weighs anchor, and, full of hope and joy, launches forth 
into the deep. The pious monk, Staupitz, says, " Die as Christ 
did, and then, beyond all doubt, your death will be good and 
blessed." But how, then, did Christ die ? " No man," he him- 
self says, "taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself." 
And St. Luke tells us that " when the time was come that he 
should be received up, he steadfastly set his face to go to Jeru- 
salem;" that is, he took the way to it with a confident and 



Il6 DEATH. 

cheerful heart and an intrepid look. Let us follow this grea? 
forerunner; and that we may do it with alacrity and confidence, 
and be at all times ready, let us so order our affairs that when 
we come to die, we may have nothing else to do. — Christian 
Scriver 

He that always waits upon God, is ready whensoever he calls, 
Neglect not to set your accounts even ; he is a happy man who 
so lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to 
die. — Feltham. 

When faith is strong, and conscience clear, 
And words of peace the spirit cheer, 
And visioned glories half appear, 

'Tis joy, 'tis triumph then to die. — Mrs. Barbauld. 




CHAPTER VI.— SIN AND DEATH. 

DEATH TO MAN IS A PENALTY FOR SIN. 

(Written expressly for this volume.) 

EATH is the common lot of humanity; the translations 
of Enoch and Elijah are the only exceptions. It was 
introduced by the sin of our first parents: " by one man 
sin entered into the world, and death by sin." From 
that time "it was appointed unto men once to die; but 
after this the judgment." 

The skeptic assumes that death is a physical necessity: be- 
cause, i. Vegetation dies at maturity; 2. Because some animals 
are carnivorous — made to live on flesh; and 3. Because what 
man or beast eats must die. From this it is inferred that the 
Scripture account of death is not true. 

In this they ignore the fact that vegetables and the lower 
animals were designed for food; and that the death alluded to 
here is that of man, not for food, but as a penalty for sin. Man 
only could sin, he being the only moral and responsible being 



REV. ALFRED B RUNS ON, A. M., D. D. nj 

on earth. The law given him to keep allowed him to eat of 
every tree in the garden but one. Of that one it was said, " In 
the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." 

Man came into existence with very different powers and fac- 
ulties and for very different purposes than vegetation or the 
lower animals. Of these it is said, "Let the water bring forth 
abundantly the living creature that hath life;" "Let the earth 
bring forth grass and herb, and the living creature after his 
kind." And these being designed for man's use, must of neces- 
sity die. But of man it is said, " The Lord God formed man 
(his body) out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul;" "and 
to have dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, 
and the cattle, and over all the earth." This implies a sovereign 
control and use, none of which is said of any other creature. 

Man was also made " in the image and likeness of God," an 
intellectual, intelligent being, and as such a free moral agent, 
responsible to God, his Creator. He was sovereign over the 
other creatures upon the earth; they were his subjects. He was 
responsible to God; they were not. He was capable of sinning; 
they were not. Death to him was a penalty ; not so to them. 
Their death was natural, or necessary to the objects of their 
being; to him it was a penalty for sin. If death was a physical 
necessity to man, to make it a penalty was but a farce, for he 
must die whether he sinned or not. 

The mission of Christ to our world proves that death, in the 
human body, was a penalty for sin. He came "to destroy the 
works of the devil;" to undo, counteract those works, and restore 
man from the effects of sin. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ 
shall all be made alive" from the dead. The stress St. Paul 
lays upon this one fact, the resurrection of the dead, shows that 
if this one effect of sin remained not counteracted, the mission 
of Christ was a failure ; " then is our preaching vain and your 
faith is also vain." 

If death had not been introduced, the race must have lived to 
the end of the world; and multiplied just fast enough to fill it 
with people by that time. But the introduction of death would 



U8 DEATH. 

prevent this unless an increase of population were provided for. 
This was done. After the atonement was promised in the " seed 
of the woman," and Adam was to live and people the world as 
was originally designed, God said to her " I will greatly multiply 
thy conception." What other reason can be assigned for this 
increase of population ? 

It seems clear to me that this world, when created, was 
designed to continue a given period, symbolized by the first 
division of time, seven days. And though Adam's sin deranged 
the moral world, it did not change the duration of the physical 
world. Each of the first seven days of time symbolizing a 
thousand years : " One day is with the Lord as a thousand 
years, and a thousand years as one day." If the word thousand 
here is merely a figure of God's eternity, the word billion or 
trillion would have been more appropriate. There must have 
been a design in using the word thousand by divine inspiration. 
"A day in thy courts is better than a thousand" in the tents of 
wickedness. So it is better than a trillion or an eternity. All 
symbols used by divine direction are based on some literal fact 
or truth. 

The millennium, or thousand years of rest to the church, at 
or near the end of the world, is accepted as a literal thousand, 
symbolized by the day of rest after the creation. The other six 
days being of the same length, from evening to evening, and 
each symbolizing a thousand years, the duration of this world 
will be seven thousand years. 

God said to Adam, " in the day thou eatest thereof (the for- 
bidden fruit) thou shalt surely die," and though through the 
atonement of Christ he was spared to people the world, neither 
he nor any of his posterity lived to be a thousand years old : 
they all died within the symbolized day. 

If Adam had never sinned, and at the end of the world and 
the final judgment had been approved by God, and admitted into 
heaven, would his body have been like as his resurrected body 
will be ? Of this we are not informed. The Bible was written 
for man in his fallen, not his z/;/-fallen state. There is but one 
case in the divine record that indicates that a change would have 



BR UNSON— PHILIPPE. 



II 9 



occurred in this event before entering heaven. Adam had a 
wife, and was commanded to " multiply and replenish the earth." 
The generative powers in both man and beast evidently were 
given to populate this world, not the next ; and when their mis- 
sion is fulfilled, they must cease to exist. Enoch and Elijah 
were translated, equivalent to death and a resurrection. But as 
they were of our fallen race, the change that occurred in them 
can give us no light as to what would occur with an un-faWcn 
race. 

Our race is doomed to die, but how or by what means is not 
defined. The earth was cursed for man's sake, and from it a 
malaria rises with the seeds of death, and floats in the air we 
breathe, and produces disease and death in various forms, and is 
incorporated in what we eat and drink. Death may come from 
the violence of man or beast, which could not have occurred, if 
man had not sinned. It may come from casualties, or the hand 
of justice, " for he that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his 
blood be shed." The magistrate is God's minister in such a 
case. But if none of these occur, we must die of age. Die we 
must, unless such as are alive at the end of time, who " shall be 
changed in the twinkling of an eye." 

Death is said to be " the king of terrors, and the terror of 
kings." But through the atonement of Christ, the Christian 
triumphs over it. Sin was the cause of its advent to man, and 
is its sting; when sin is pardoned, the sting is taken away. 
" Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." — Rev. Alfred Brunson, A. M. y D. D. 

DEATH THE WAGES OF SIN. 

Adam and Eve saw death strike down Abel, their best beloved 
son ; a little later, and they saw it approach to strike themselves. 
So it is with all men. Death reigns as sovereign over them. 
Sin has placed in his hands a sceptre of iron, to which every- 
thing that breathes is subject. 

Ah ! who will not then hate sin which is the cause of so great 
misery ! We weep over the ravages of death, over the ruin it 
has accomplished ; let us weep still more over that which intro- 



120 DEATH. 

duced it into the world, and gave it its power. Let us hate sin 
with all the horror it should inspire us with. 

Oh ! let us be persuaded that sin is death : the death of the 
soul, and the source of death to the body : the death of indi- 
viduals, and the death of societies. If it reigns in a community, 
a city, a state, all there is confusion, all is destruction : soon 
nothing will be left but ruins. Is not this the teaching of history 
in all times, and among all nations ? Is it not a fact of universal 
experience ? 

Yes, we shall all die, all of us who are the children of a guilty 
father ; and the day is perhaps not far distant when it shall be 
said of us, as of so many others — " he is dead, he has closed the 
career which he was destined to run here below ; he has entered 
upon his eternity : he is dead." 

Yes, we shall die because we have all sinned in Adam, and 
in ourselves. We shall die because we all have within us sin, 
which is the cause of death ; and to each of us, as to our first 
parents, was it said : " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou 
return." We shall die because the poison of sin which is 
within us is a deadly poison, which must necessarily produce its 
fatal consequences. We shall die because we are sinners, and 
because, as St. Paul teaches — " the wages of sin is death." 

Philippe. 
DEATH THE COMPANION OF SIN. 

The ancients called death the brother of sleep, and as such 
they often depicted it. This was, however, but an attempt to veil 
its terrors under a poetic figure, for the mind is not really deliv- 
ered from them by any such means. Schelling, in his beautiful 
Dialogue " Clara," represents death as the liberation of a higher 
germ of life which lies hidden in man. It is true that we have 
an immortal guest in the perishing tabernacle of the body. 
But the breaking up of this tabernacle is the most violent and 
painful act of life, and every one feels that this way of deliver- 
ance is an unnatural one. Our nature would not so struggle 
against it in the agonies of death, if it were in agreement there- 
with. Death is a rupture running through our whole being and 
dissolving the harmony of our life. And does not the whole 



L UTHARD T—MELANCTHON— WA TSON. x 2 1 

realm of nature which is external to us exhibit the same image 
of a destroyed harmony ? Our feelings involuntarily associate 
this sway of death with sin. The testimony of conscience bids 
us seek the reason of this discord of life in the discord existing 
in the moral world. It is God's justice that has made death the 
companion of sin. It is the moral laws of nature that have con- 
nected the one with the other. The reason why the discords of 
creation around us touch us so powerfully is, that we feel them 
to be images of our moral condition. And it is the conscious- 
ness of this connection which gives to suffering its full poig- 
nancy. — Chr. Ernst Litthardt. 

But we in the church know that the first and principal cause 
of human woe is this, that on account of sin, man is made sub- 
ject to death and other calamity.— Philip Melancthon. 

THE STING OF DEATH IS SIN. 

The meaning of these words is, that, to a man conscious of 
unpardoned and unpurged sin, death is armed with a peculiar 
pungency of dread and horror. They refer, not so much to that 
natural dread of suffering and death, which all may occasionally 
feel, as to that which is produced by a sense of guilt, and a pain- 
ful apprehension of punishment. This is an important distinc- 
tion. Could we suppose a perfectly innocent being liable to 
death, as we are, and without any apprehensions as to the future ; 
yet, to be liable to sudden interruption in his plans, to a separa- 
tion from beloved friends and relations, to the pangs of disease, 
and the pains of dissolution, must necessarily invest death with 
characters repulsive, ghastly, and fearful. Here, however, 
would be no " sting," no inward biting of remorse, no rankling 
anticipations of evil beyond, no sense of the frown of God. 
These constitute what the apostle calls death's "sting." It is 
felt, more or less, by every sinful man ; and it is felt most by 
him who is most aware of the sad truth and reality of his con- 
dition. If men succeed in blunting its point, that is but through 
a delusion which makes their case the more hopeless ; and it 
is but temporary. There is a sharp and envenomed sting in 



122 DEATH. 

death, to every man who, having judgment and conscience, is 
yet surprised by it without preparation ; for sin is the sting of 
death. — Richard Watson. 

When our souls shall leave this dwelling, the glory of one 
fair and virtuous action is above all the scutcheons on our 
tomb, or silken banners over us. — jF. Shirley. 

UNTIMELY DEATH MAY BE THE RESULT OF SPECIAL SIN. 

Untimely death may be the result of special sin. We can 
all understand how this can be the case when even a good man, 
moved by a zeal which is not tempered with discretion, forgets 
the laws of health, and works in such a way as to bring upon 
himself premature disease of brain or heart, by which he is 
prostrated long before he reaches the limit of threescore years 
and ten. This is especially the temptation of the times in which 
we live. Amidst the hurry and rush of our modern business, 
with our railroads, and telegraphs, and steam-navigation, we arc 
all too apt to be borne along with the current ; and ever an d 
anon we are startled by the hopeless breakdown of some able 
and energetic leader in the very mid-time of his days ; while, in 
the church as in the world, men of influence and energy burn 
themselves out by the intensity of their devotion to their work. 
Now and then, indeed, a word of warning will be uttered by 
loving friends and earnest fellow-laborers, but it is silenced by 
the assertion, " It is better to wear out than rust out ; " and the 
issue, as might have been foreseen, is a sudden collapse, or a 
premature grave. Such self-consuming toil is not only unneces- 
sary, but it is positively sinful. We have no right to kill our- 
selves, and call it zeal ; and, perhaps, if we were to get at the 
tfoot of the evil in such a case, we should find it not in public 
spirit, but in personal ambition. Such a prodigality of vitality 
is not sacrifice but suicide ; and it ought to be distinctly under- 
stood that overwork is wickedness, the guilt of which will keep 
us forever on the eastern side of our Jordan. 

So, it is possible that for personal sin, not in the physical but 
in the moral sphere, a man may die before his time. We recog- 



TA YL OR—B USHNELL. 



123 



nize the truth of this assertion in the case of the ungodly, but 
it holds also in those who must be described as servants of the 
Lord; and if we could see below the surface, we might discover 
that those deaths which are so often described by us as mys- 
terious dispensations of Providence, have no more of mystery 
about them than the death of Moses, but have occurred when 
they did because of some sin with which the individuals were 
chargeable. This is a somewhat awful thought, and the mere 
enunciation of it is all that is required to point the warning 
which it suggests. David was not permitted to build the temple, 
because he had been a man of war from his youth ; and the 
disappointments which have clouded many death-beds may have 
been similarly connected with the characters of the antecedent 
lives. In any case, it may be well for us to remember that our 
sins may shorten our lives, and shut us out of the earthly Canaan 
which we so much wish to possess. — William M. Taylor, D. D, 

THE DISORGANIZING EFFECT OF SIN IN THE BODY. 

It is important also, considering the moral reactions of the 
body, and especially the great fact of a propagation of the 
species, to notice the disorganizing effect of sin in the body. 
Body and soul, as long as they subsist in their organized state, 
are a strict unity. The abuses of one are abuses also of the 
other. The disturbances and diseases of one disturb and dis- 
ease the other. The fortunes of the body must, in this way, 
follow the fortunes of the soul, whose organ it is. Sin has all 
its working too in the working of the brain. To think an evil 
thought, indulge a wicked purpose or passion, will, in this view, 
be much as if the sin had brought in a grain of sand and lodged 
it in the tissues of the brain. What then must be the effect, 
when every path in its curious network of intelligence is trav- 
eled, year by year, by the insulting myriads of sinning thought, 
hardened by the tramp of their feet, and dusted by their smoky 
trail ? 

But we are speaking theoretically. If we turn to practical 
evidences, or matters of fact, we shall see plainly enough that 
what should follow, in the effects of sin upon the body, actually 



1 24 DEA Tff. 

do follow. How the vices of the appetites and passions termi- 
nate in diseases and a final disorganization of the body, is well 
understood. The false conjunction made by intemperate drink, 
deluging the tissues of the body with its liquid poisons, and 
reducing the body to a loathsome wreck, is not peculiar to that 
vice. The condition of sin is a condition of general intemper- 
ance. It takes away the power of self-government, loosens the 
passions y and makes even the natural appetite for food an insti- 
gator of excess. Indeed, how many of the sufferings and 
infirmities, even of persons called virtuous, are known by all 
intelligent physicians to be only the groaning of the body under 
loads habitually imposed, by the untempered and really diseased 
voracity of their appetites ! And if we could trace all the secret 
actions of causes, how faithfully would the fevers, the rheumat- 
isms, the neuralgic and hypochondriacal torments, all the grim- 
looking woes of dyspepsia, be seen to follow the unregulated 
license of this kind of sin! Nor is anything better understood 
than that whatever vice of the mind — wounded pride, unregu- 
lated ambition, hatred, covetousness, fear, inordinate care — 
throws the mind out of rest, throws the body out of rest also. 
Thus it is that sin, in all its forms, becomes a power of bodily 
disturbance, shattering the nerves, inflaming the tissues, dis- 
tempering the secretions, and brewing a general ferment of 
disease. In one view, the body is a kind of perpetual crystal- 
lization, and the crystal of true health cannot form itself under 
sin, because the body has, within, a perpetual agitating cause, 
which forbids the process. If, then, looking round upon the 
great field of humanity, and noting the almost universal working 
of disease, in so many forms and varieties that they cannot be 
named or counted, we sometimes exclaim, with a sigh, what a 
hospital the world is ! We must be dull spectators if we stop 
at this, and do not also connect the remembrance that sin is in 
the world ; a gangrene of the mind, poisoning all the roots of 
health and making visible its woes, by so many woes of bodily 
disease and death. 

The particular question, whether bodily mortality has entered 
the world by sin, we will not discuss. That is principally a 



HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D. I2 ^ 

Scripture question, and the word of Scripture is not to be as 
sumed in my argument. There obviously might have been a 
mode of translation to the second life, that should have none of 
the painful and revolting incidents which constitute the essential 
reality of death. We do moreover know that a very considerable 
share of the diseases and deaths of our race are the natural 
effects of sin or wrong-doing. There is a great reason also to 
suspect, so devastating is the power of moral evil, that the infec- 
tions and deadly plagues of the world are somehow generated 
by this cause. They seem to have their spring in some new 
virus of death, and this new virus must have been somewhere 
and somehow distilled, or generated. We cannot refer them to 
mineral causes, or vegetable, or animal, which are nearly invari- 
able, and they seem, as they begin their spread at some given 
locality, to have a humanly personal origin. That the virus of a 
poisonous and deadly contagion has been generated by human 
vices, we know, as a familiar fact of history, which makes it the 
more probable that other pestilential contagions have been gen- 
erated in the deteriorated populations and sweltering vices of the 
East, whence our plagues are mostly derived. On this point we 
assert nothing as a truth positively discovered ; we only design 
by these references, to suggest the possible (and, to us, probable) 
extent and power of that ferment, brewed by the instigations of 
sin, in the diseased populations of the world. What we suggest 
respecting the virus of the world's plagues may be true, or it 
may not ; this at least is shown beyond all question, that sin is a 
wide-spreading, dreadful power of bodily distemper and disor- 
ganization, which is the point of principal consequence. 

Horace Busknell, D. D. 

MISERY OF MAN RESULTING FROM THE INTRODUCTION OF SIN AND 

DEATH. 

Who shall describe the misery of fallen man ! His days 
though few are full of evil. Trouble and sorrow press him for- 
ward to the tomb. All the world except Noah and his family 
are drowning in the deluge. A storm of fire and brimstone is 
fallen from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah. The earth is 



126 DEATH. 

opening her mouth to ^wallop up alive Korah, Dathan and 
Abiram. Wrath is coming upon "the Beloved City," even 
" wrath unto the uttermost." The tender and delicate mother 
is devouring her darling infant. The sword of men is executing 
the vengeance of God. The earth is emptying its inhabitants 
into the bottomless pit. On every hand are " confused noises 
and garments rolled in blood." Fire and sword fill the land 
with consternation and dismay. Amid the universal devastation, 
wild shrieks and despairing groans fill the air. God of mercy ! 
is Thy ear heavy, that Thou canst not hear ? or Thy arm short- 
ened that Thou canst not save ? The heavens above are brass, 
and the earth beneath is iron ; for Jehovah pours His indignation 
upon his adversaries, and He will not pity or spare. 

Verily " the misery of man is great upon him." Behold the 
wretched, fallen creature ! The pestilence pursues him. The 
leprosy cleaves to him. Consumption is wasting him. Inflam- 
mation is devouring his vitals. Burning fever has seized upon 
the very springs of life. The destroying angel has overtaken 
the sinner in his sins. The hand of God is upon him. The 
fires of wrath are kindling about him, drying up every well of 
comfort, and scorching all his hopes to ashes. Conscience is 
chastening him with scorpions. See how he writhes ! Hear 
how he shrieks for help ! Mark what agony and terror are in his 
soul, and on his brow ! Death stares him in the face, and shakes 
at him his iron spear. He trembles, he turns pale, as a culprit 
at the bar, as a convict on the scaffold. He is condemned 
already. Conscience has pronounced the sentence. Anguish 
has taken hold upon him. Terrors gather in battle-array about 
him. He looks back, and the storms of Sinai pursue him ; for- 
ward, and hell is moved to meet him ; above, and the heavens 
are on fire ; beneath, and the world is burning. He listens, and 
the judgment trump is calling; again, and the brazen chariots 
of vengeance are thundering from afar ; yet again, and the sen- 
tence penetrates his soul with anguish unspeakable — " Depart, 
ye accursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
angels ! " 

Thus, " by one man sin entered into the world, and death by 



CHRISTMAS EVANS, D. D. i2 y 

sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." 
They are " dead in trespasses and sins ; " spiritually dead, and 
legally dead ; dead by the mortal power of sin, and dead by the 
condemnatory sentence of the law ; and helpless as sheep to the 
slaughter, they are driven fiercely on by the ministers of wrath 
to the all-devouring grave, and the lake of fire. . . . 

Suppose a vast graveyard, surrounded by a lofty wall, with 
only one entrance, which is by a massive iron gate, and that is 
fast bolted. Within are thousands and millions of human beings, 
of all ages and classes, by one epidemic disease bending to the 
grave. The graves yawn to swallow them, and they must all 
perish. There is no balm to relieve, no physician there. Such is 
the condition of man as a sinner. All have sinned ; and it is writ- 
ten, " The soul that sinneth shall die." — Christmas Evans, D. D. 

THE MISERABLE END OF WICKED MEN. 

Mark the wicked man, though his Inirat may be comical, his 
Exit is always tragical. Belshazzar in his first scene is revelling 
out his time in sin and pleasure, feasting and carousing with his 
concubines in the vessels of the Lord; but view him in the 
catastrophe, and you shall find the handwriting and him trem- 
bling, Darius rending away his kingdom, and death snatching 
away his life. If you look upon the entrance of a wicked man, 
his gates are riches, his seats honor, his paths pleasures ; he 
goes delicately, fares deliciously every day, he hath more than 
heart can wish : but wait his going out, and see a sad conclusion, 
in a moment he goes down to hell. The man is cast out from 
God as an everlasting curse : destruction closes her mouth upon 
him, and his place beholds him no more ; his body is wrapt in 
the dust, his soul is buried in the flames, and his name is cov- 
ered with darkness. But now, behold the perfect man : it may be 
thou mayest see a few tragical scenes, the world hating, mocking, 
persecuting him ; but the end of that man is peace. Though he 
may come forth weeping, yet he goes off rejoicing; though he 
came forth combating, yet he goes out triumphing, so that the 
saints and angels clap their hands for joy. When I therefore 
judge of a happy man, I'll wait his end. I care not for his 
entrance. — Divine Breathings, 



128 DEATH. 

THE DYING SINNER. 

What a frightful state is that of the sinner on his bed of death, 
and how can we contemplate it without shuddering! 

If the unhappy man has lost his consciousness, repentance is 
impossible, and he falls, without perceiving it, into the abyss 
of fire that is about to close over him. His soul in that state 
of consciousness finds itself unexpectedly in the presence of its 
Sovereign Judge, and the first words it hears will be its own 
sentence to endless misery. 

But, suppose the dying sinner has the use of his faculties, 
what impressions must his past life, the present moment, and the 
awful future make upon him. 

Up till then such matters have given him no concern. Buried 
in a sort of drowsiness and insensibility, he heard of God, sin, 
death, judgment, heaven, hell, eternity, without experiencing 
any emotion, or any sentiment capable of arousing him and 
making him enter into a care for his soul. But all is now 
changed. The hour has come in which he must look these 
truths in the face, and acknowledge that he was not created 
only for time, but much more, for eternity. Then it is at the 
approach of death that faith awakens within him, and that he 
appreciates things according to their just value. 

"I am going to die," says this man; "it is all over with me. 
I must quit forever all that I loved on earth, and enter an eter- 
nity for which I am unprepared." 

O my God, who can picture how lamentable is his condition, 
one that might well chill our hearts with terror ! — Philippe. 

DEATH-BED REPENTANCE. 

The possibility of death-bed repentance we do not deny; the 
frequency of its occurrence we seriously doubt. Many impeni- 
tent men, however, are delaying the hour of repentance with the 
intention of offering a few prayers for pardon just before the 
breath leaves the body. A little reflection ought to convince 
such of the folly of their conduct. Do they consider how rare 
a combination of circumstances must exist in order that their 
hopes may be fulfilled ? The man who thus delays makes most 
foolish assumptions, and runs most fearful risks. 



w 




STERNE— JEREMY TA YL OR— VAN O OS TERZEE. T 2 q 

He usually pictures to himself a death-bed with fnends 
around, and he himself praying for pardon. But how many 
never have a death-bed! Every day men are cut down sud- 
denly by disease or by accident. He also assumes that he will 
have consciousness, and especially that he will know that he is 
about to die. He forgets how many are unconscious for hours, 
and sometimes for days, before death, and that many who retain 
consciousness are not aware that they are near their end. The 
physician himself is not always able to tell, and when the fact 
is known, friends dread to divulge the secret to the dying man. 

But it is also assumed that being on his dying bed, and know- 
ing that his dying hour has come, he will have a favorable time 
and opportunity to repent. How strange that any man who has 
ever seen a death-bed should consider it a good place for re- 
pentance ! Business matters are often to be attended to, for the 
dying must not forget the living; pain is sometimes so intense 
that mental effort is very difficult; the mind often wanders and 
the thoughts refuse to be controlled. Are these the circum- 
stances under which sinners are to review their lives and seek 
for pardon? Surely the worst possible hour to begin a religious 
life is the hour of death. — Northwestern Christian Advocate. 

Whatever stress some may lay upon it, a death-bed repentance 
is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all on. — Sterne. 

Since repentance is a duty of so great and giant-like bulk, let 
no man crowd it into so narrow room as that It is strangled in 
its birth for want of time, and air to breathe in. — Jeremy Taylor. 

THE PAULINE CONCEPTION OF DEATH. 

Sin brings death, just because it is wrought in opposition to 
the command of the law. Necessarily it is now imputed, as well 
on this side as on the other side of the grave. The sinner comes 
short of the glory of God, i. c., of the honor which he would have 
had with God, had he not sinned and become exposed to the 
righteous judgment which concentrates itself in death (Rom. vi. 
21 j. The Pauline idea of death is not easy to define in its whole 
9 



13° 



DEATH. 



fulness. We are just as little entitled to restrict it to the idea 
of physical death alone, as we are entirely to exclude this idea. 
In every case the idea of spiritual death is included (see Eph. ii. 
I, 5; Col. ii. 13); and we cannot overlook the fact that death is, 
m the full sense, the wages of sin, inasmuch as it ends in ever- 
lasting perdition. That Paul had also this latter in mind, is 
clear from the antithesis of death and the gracious gift of ever- 
lasting life (Rom. vi. 23). In the idea of death there is united, 
consequently, that of the greatest temporal and everlasting 
wretchedness; and, in the language of the apostle, greater or 
less prominence. Spiritual death leads to temporal, and this 
passes over into eternal death. — J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D. 



CHAPTER VII.— CHRISTIANITY AND DEATH. 

THE FACT OF DEATH UNCHANGED BY GRACE. 

tHRISTIANITY does not exempt from death; it only 
insures triumph over it. Moses died, Paul died, Jesus 
died, and Christians all must die. There is no other 
way of entrance into our Father's house. Elijah was 
translated that he should not see death, but Lazarus, 
whom Jesus loved, twice tasted its bitterness. These unusual 
cases prove that death is subject to the divine mandate, but that 
only in the rarest instances is it appointed unto man more or 
less than "once to die." — Editor, 

DEATH NEEDS ALL THE CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION. 

Without the hope of a better world, and apart from mercy, 
pardon, grace and glory, through the blood of Jesus, what were 
death to us but an object of unutterable gloom? I shrink from 
seeing it. Even with the consolations of the gospel, what sight so 
bitter as to see a loved one dying; our sweet flower withering day 
by day on its drooping stalk \ the cold shadow as of an eclipse 



THOMAS GUTHRIE. 



131 



creeping over the whole horizon of our being, till, one hope after 
another disappearing in the deepening gloom, we are left, but 
for the light of God's Spirit and truth, to blank despair. As we 
hang over dying couch or cradle, how it wrings the heart to see 
the imploring look turned on us, and we can minister no relief; 
to hear the low moanings, and we cannot still them ; and when 
the struggle is long protracted, to be forced to pray that God 
would come in mercy to close this dreadful scene. There is no 
event so terrible as death ; no sound so awful as that last sigh ; 
no coldness so chill to the touch as the brow or face of the 
dead. And when, in place of one full of light, and life, and love, 
our arms embrace a pale, clay-cold corpse; when, for childhood's 
smiling face, pattering feet, prattling tongue, sparkling eye and 
merry laughter, we have nothing but that solemn countenance, 
that rigid form, that marble brow, that cold, clammy hand, that 
silent tenant of a lonesome room, death, indeed, needs all the 
consolations of religion. 

Apart from the hopes of a better and brighter world, to one's 
self also death is an unutterable evil. What weary hours, and 
days, and nights, often usher in the closing scene! And that 
scene! what terrible sufferings may we have to endure, and 
others have to witness, in our dying chamber? — such as we 
have seen where the dying seemed to be struggling with an in- 
visible enemy fixed on his throat, and whom he vainly tried to 
throw off? Steps he into a palace or a hovel, Death is the 
King of Terrors. In the ghastly countenance, the filmy eyes, 
the restless head, the wild tossing of the arms, the hands that, 
as if they sought something to cling to, clutch the bed-clothes, 
the muttering lips, the wandering mind, the deep insensibility, 
the heavy breathing, the awful pauses, and that long-drawn, 
shivering sigh, which closes the scene, and seems to say, as the 
departing spirit casts one last look on all that is past and gone, 
" Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," death has the look of a tre- 
mendous curse. 

Solomon pronounces a living dog to be better than a dead 
lion ; and I say, better be a living beggar than a dead king. I 
love to live — to walk abroad, to see the sunshine, to hear the 



l 3 2 



BE A Tff. 



birds sing, to wander by rippling stream, or sit on banks where 
sweet flowers grow ; I love the homes where I loo'k on happy 
faces, receive welcome greeting, and hear kind voices speak. 
To be shut out from these, nailed up in a narrow coffin, buried 
in the dull earth, to moulder into dust and be forgotten, and, 
when fires are cheerily blazing on our hearth, and songs and 
laughter by their merry ring tell of broken hearts healed again, 
to be lying cold, and lonely, and joyless in the tomb, are not 
things we love to dwell on. Our Lord himself shrank from 
death, and fell at his Father's feet to cry, " If it be possible, let 
this cup pass from me." None but the wretched court it ; wish 
to die ; to lie down among the naked skulls and grim, unsocial 
tenants of the grave. Faith herself, standing on the edge of 
the grave, turns her eye upward ; and, leaving the poor body 
to worms and dust, wings her flight heavenward ; follows the 
spirit to the realms of bliss, and loves to think of the dead as 
living — as not dead, but standing before the Lamb with crowns 
of glory, and bending on us looks of love and kindness from 
their celestial seats. Yes ; death needs all the comforts which 
religion can summon to our aid. 

Nor are we left comfortless. By his life and death and resur- 
rection Christ has fulfilled the expectations of prophets ; nor, 
though bold and grand, is the language too lofty which Hosea 
puts into his mouth, "O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, 
I will be thy destruction." The Death of Death, the Life of 
the grave, and, greatest of all its tenants, he has conquered this 
conqueror of kings; broken the prison; bound the jailer; and 
seized the keys to set all his captive people free, in the fullness 
of time. They are " prisoners of hope." He " will bring Dack 
his banished." He has entered into glory as their forerunner. — 
Thomas Guthrie. 

CHRISTIANITY SOLVES THE PROBLEM OF DEATH. 

The earliest and most urgent intellectual want of human 
nature is the knowledge of its origin, its duty, and its destiny. 
" Whence am I, what am I, and what is before me?" This is 
the cry of the human soul, so soon as it raises its contemplation 
above visible, material things. 






WEBSTER—BLAIR. ^3 

When an intellectual being finds himself on this earth, as 
soon as the faculties of reason operate, one of the first inquiries 
of his mind is, " Shall I be here always ? " " Shall I live here 
forever? " And reasoning from what he sees daily occurring to 
others, he learns to a certainty that his state of being must one 
day be changed. I do not mean to deny, that it may be true 
that he is created with this consciousness ; but whether it be 
consciousness, or the result of his reasoning faculties, man soon 
learns that he must die. And of all sentient beings, he alone, 
so far as we can judge, attains to this knowledge. His Maker 
has made him capable of learning this. Before he knows his 
origin and destiny, he knows that he is to die. Then comes 
that most urgent and solemn demand for light that ever pro- 
ceeded, or can proceed, from the profound and anxious brood- 
ings of the human soul. " If a man die, shall he live again ? " 
And that question nothing but God and the religion of God can 
solve. Religion does solve it, and teaches every man that he is 
to live again, and that the duties of this life have reference to 
the life which is to come. And hence, since the introduction 
of Christianity, it has been the duty, as it has been the effort, of 
the great and the good, to sanctify human knowledge, to bring 
it to the fount, and to baptize learning into Christianity; to 
gather up all its productions, its earliest and its latest, its blos- 
soms and its fruits, and lay them all upon the altar of religion 
and virtue. — Daniel Webster. 

THE VOICE OF REASON IN RESPECT TO DEATH. 

After this manner Reason may be supposed to address man- 
kind, in order to reconcile them to their fate. — Children of men ! 
it is well known to you, that you are a mortal race. Death is 
the law of your nature, the tribute of your being, the debt which 
all are bound to pay. On these terms you received life, that 
you should be ready to give it up when Providence calls you 
to make room for others, who, in like manner, when their 
time is come, shall follow you. He who is unwilling to submit 
to death when heaven decrees it, deserves not to have lived. 
You might as reasonably complain that you did not live before 



1 34 DEA TH. 

the time appointed for your coming into the world, as lament 
that you are not to live longer, when the period of your quitting 
it has arrived. What Divine Providence hath made necessary, 
human prudence ought to comply with cheerfully. Submit, at 
any rate, you must ; and is it not much better to follow, of your 
own accord, than to be dragged reluctantly, and by force ? 
What privilege have you to plead, or what reason to urge, 
why you should possess an exemption from the common doom ? 
All things around you are mortal and perishing. Cities, 
states, and empires, have their period set. The proudest monu- 
ments of human art moulder into dust. Even the works of 
nature wax old and decay. In the midst of this universal ten- 
dency to change, could you expect that to your frame alone a 
permanent duration should be given ? All who have gone be- 
fore you have submitted to the stroke of death. All who are 
to come after you shall undergo the same fate. The great and 
the good, the prince and the peasant, the renowned and the 
obscure, travel alike the road which leads to the grave. At 
the moment when you expire, thousands throughout the world 
shall, together with you, be yielding up their breath. Can that 
be held a great calamity which is common to you with every- 
thing that lives on earth, which is an event as much according 
to the course of nature as it is that leaves should fall in autumn, 
or that fruit should drop from the tree when it is fully ripe? 

The pain of death cannot be very long, and is probably less 
severe than what you have at other times experienced. The 
pomp of death is more terrifying than death itself. It is to the 
weakness of imagination that it owes its chief power of deject- 
ing your spirits ; for, when the force of the mind is roused, there 
is almost no passion in our nature but what has shown itself 
able to overcome the fear of death. Honor has defied death ; 
love has despised it; shame has rushed upon it; revenge has dis- 
regarded it; grief a thousand times has wished for its approach, 
Is it not strange that reason and virtue cannot give you strength 
to surmount that fear, which even in feeble minds so many 
passions have conquered ? What inconsistency is there in com- 
plaining so much of the evils of life, and being at the sam$ 



BLAIR— BOS WELL. 



135 



time so afraid of what is to terminate them all ! Who can tell 

whether his future life might not teem with disasters and 

miseries, as yet unknown, were it to be prolonged according to 

his wish ! At any rate, is it desirable to draw life out to the 

last drags, and to wait till old age pour upon you its whole 

store of diseases and sorrows ? You lament that you are to die ; 

but, did you view your situation properly, you would have 

much greater cause to lament, if you were chained to this life 

for two or three hundred years, without possibility of release. 

Expect, therefore, calmly, that which is natural in itself, and 

which must be fit, because it is the appointment of Heaven. 

Perform your duty as a good subject of the Deity, during the 

time allotted you, and rejoice that a period is fixed for your 

dismission from the present warfare. Remember, that a slavish 

dread of death destroys all the comfort of that life which you 

seek to preserve. Better to undergo the stroke of death at 

once, than to live in perpetual misery from the fear of dying. 

— Hugh Blair. 

CONTENTMENT IN DEATH. 

We spoke of death. Dr. Johnson on this subject observed 
that the boastings of some men as to dying easily were idle 
talk, proceeding from partial views. I mentioned Hawthorn- 
den's " Cypress-grove," where it is said that the world is a mere 
show, and that it is unreasonable for a man to wish to continue 
in the show-room after he has seen it. Let him go cheerfully 
out, and give place to other spectators. " Yes," said Johnson, 
" if he is sure he is to be well after he goes out of it. But if he 
is to grow blind after he goes out of the show-room, and never 
to see anything again, or if he does not know whither he is to 
go next, a man will not go cheerfully out of a show-room. No 
wise man will be contented to die if he thinks he is to go into a 
state of punishment. Nay, no wise man will be contented to die 
if he thinks he is to fall into annihilation ; for, however unhappy 
any man's existence may be, he yet would rather have it than 
not exist at all. No ; there is no rational principle by which a 
man can die contented but a trust in the mercy of God, through 
the merits of Jesus Christ." This short sermon, delivered with 



136 



DEATH, 



an earnest tone in a boat upon the sea, which was perfectly calm, 
on a day appropriated to religious worship, while every one lis- 
tened with an air of satisfaction, had a most pleasing effect upon 
my mind. — Boswell. 

THE BIBLE OUR ONLY SOLACE IN DEATH. 

To real mourners there is left only a single comfort that will 
prove satisfactory. We may reason and argue, but all in vain. 
No assurance about its being better for the friends we have lost 
to be where they are : no chilly philosophy as to manly fortitude 
or womanly endurance : no professions of sincere sympathy 
counselling courage — nothing is sufficient for our terrible be- 
reavements, except the calm declaration : " Thy brother shall 
rise again." We insist upon the certainty that some time we 
must be reunited to the hearts we regret and remember with o\v 
tears. 

Just here the Scripture meets us positively : " For if we 
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which 
sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." We cannot take away 
death, but we can take the sting out of death. We must enter 
the conflict with the last enemy : " But thanks be to God, which 
giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." At last 
there comes something authoritative. The moment we read a 
verse of inspiration like these we are studying, we feel as we do 
when we see a great meteoric stone — we say this is a piece of 
another planet. — Charles S. Robinson, D. D. 

When, in the solemn hour of death, 

I wait thy just decree, 
Saviour, with my last parting breath, 

I'll cry, " Remember me ! " — Dr. Thomas IIa?veis. 

DEATH VANQUISHED. 

The Israelites must first pass over Jordan before they land in 
Canaan; but no sooner did the feet of the priests that bear the 
Ark of the Covenant rest in the water, but the proud waves 
saw it and fled, and the swelling streams were driven back, and 
laid in heaps, to make them pass over safe and well ; so every 



THOMPSON— MA CLEOD. \ 37 

child of God is like an Israelite in the wilderness of this world, 
travelling to the land of promise : death is that Jordan that runs 
between this wilderness and our Canaan ; it is that swelling 
stream that overflows the banks of every mortal creature ; it is 
that last river which must be passed over : but this is the happi- 
ness of a child of God, that Jesus Christ, our High Priest, that 
bears the everlasting covenant on his shoulders, hath already 
dipped his feet in the brims of this water, insomuch that the 
streams of bitterness are diverted, the sting of death plucked 
out, the water of the salt sea is dried up, and the power of the 
curse cut off, so that death is but a sure step unto glory. Why 
then am I afraid to die ? The channel is dry, and I see the 
footsteps of my Saviour in the bottom, and heaven and happi- 
ness on the other side ; so that the waters shall not go over my 
soul ; they may go over my sins, they may go over my miseries, 
they may go over my troubles, but my soul shall go over to its 
rest. Lord, therefore fit and sanctify me for my removal, and 
then take down my tent : I cannot be too soon with thee. — 
Divine Breathings. 

CHRIST WILL MEET THE BELIEVER AT DEATH. 

" I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may 

be also." 

Now surely it is enough to counterbalance all real or fanciful 
thoughts about the gloom of death, and to invest it with a very 
different aspect, if we see it but as that moment in our history 
when Jesus Christ comes himself for us, and to take us to him- 
self. We picture Death as a hideous figure coming to destroy ; 
let us rather picture Jesus Christ in glory coming to save. We 
think of death ending ; let us think rather of life beginning, and 
that more abundantly. We think of losing ; let us think of 
gaining. We think of parting ; let us think of meeting. We 
think of going away ; let us think of arriving. And as a voice 
whispers, " You must go," let us hear the voice of the good 
Shepherd saying, " I will come." 

If Jesus comes for us at death, we shall never see the grave 
or the church-yard ; they may keep our bodies for a time, but we 



I3 8 DEATH. 

ourselves shall never die. We go with Jesus. If Jesus comes 
for us at death, we do not go forth into a world of mystery and 
darkness, knowing not where nor how far. We simply go with 
and to Jesus. — Norman Macleod. 

On Calvary death itself hung gasping, with its sting pulled 
out, and all its terrors quelled ; his death having prevented ours 
and induced immortality. — Isaac Barrow, D. D. 

ASSISTANCE IN THE HOUR OF DEATH. 

Firmness and strength of mind are peculiarly requisite for the 
support of nature in its last extremity; and that strength is sup- 
plied by religion. The testimony of a good conscience, and the 
remembrance of a virtuous life, a well-grounded trust in the 
divine acceptance, and a firm hope of future felicity, are prin- 
ciples sufficient to give composure and fortitude to the heart, 
even in the midst of agony. In what a high degree they can 
suspend or alleviate the feelings of pain, has been fully demon- 
strated by the magnanimous behavior of such as have suffered 
death in the cause of conscience and religion. How often has 
the world beheld them advancing to meet that supposed king 
of terrors, not with calmness only, but with joy; raised by divine 
prospects and hopes into an entire neglect and contempt of 
bodily suffering. 

It is not without reason that a peculiar assistance from heaven 
is looked for by good men at the hour of death. As they are 
taught to believe that, in all the emergencies of their life, divine 
goodness has watched over them, they have ground to conclude 
that at the last it will not forsake them ; but at the season when 
its aid is most needed it shall be most liberally communicated. 
Accordingly, a persuasion so congruous to the benignity and 
compassion of the Father of mercies, has been the comfort of 
pious men in every age. " My flesh and my heart faileth ; but 
God is the strength of my heart;" " In the valley of the shadow 
of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." When the 
rod and staff of this Shepherd of Israel are held forth to his ex- 
piring servants, declining nature needs no other support. The 



BLAIR— PHIL IPPE. 



139 



secret influence of his reviving Spirit is sufficient for their 
consolation and strength while the painful struggle with mor- 
tality lasts; till at length, when the moment arrives when the 
silver cord must be loosed and the golden bowl be broken, their 
Almighty Protector carries off the immortal spirit, unhurt by the 
fall of its earthly tabernacle, and places it in a better mansion. 
How respectable and happy is such a conclusion of human life! 

Hugh Blair. 

THE PEACE OF MIND OF THE JUST MAN AT DEATH. 

We are assured that death is a gain to the true servants of 
God, and that they have nothing to fear at its approach, under 
whatever shape it may present itself. Ah, how many times has 
this saying been verified ! How many people of every condition 
of life have beheld their last hour approach, with resignation, 
tranquillity, and even with joy ! 

Had they not every motive for this ? They reposed on th£ 
Divine mercy; grace filled their hearts, and spread through their 
souls its sweet and consoling unction; religion lent them its 
helps, which a life of piety confirmed to be efficacious; eternity 
met their gaze, but they saw nothing there but what they loved 
and longed for; they knew they were going to appear before the 
most tender of fathers, who wished to make them sharers of his 
infinite happiness. 

What a beautiful sight is that of a good man about to finish 
his career! 

He is tranquil, and on his countenance is the impress of that 
sweetness, that serenity which is a prelude to the unalterable 
peace he will soon enjoy in heaven. No sigh of bitterness es- 
capes from his lips; his words, though uttered with pain, express 
only his confidence and submission to the divine will ; his eyes, 
though almost closed, shoot forth no rays of light, but such as 
beam with a holy and innocent hope. 

On the point of crossing the threshold that separates him 
from eternity, he looks back without pain upon the past ; he 
thinks of his struggles, and combats, and victories, and blesses 
the Author of every good and perfect gift who has brought him 



140 



DEATH. 



safely through, and to whom he now surrenders his soul as into 
the hands of his Creator. — Philippe. 

FAITH THE SECRET OF COMPOSURE. 

Of the great number to whom it has been my painful profes- 
sional duty to have administered in the last hour of their lives, 
I have sometimes felt surprised that so few have appeared re- 
luctant to go to " the undiscovered country, from whose bourne 
no traveller returns." Many, we may easily suppose, have 
manifested this willingness to die from an impatience of suffer- 
ing, or from that passive indifference which is sometimes the 
result of debility and bodily exhaustion. But I have seen those 
who have arrived at a fearless contemplation of the future, from 
faith in the doctrine which our religion teaches. Such men 
were not only calm and supported, but cheerful in the hour of 
death; and I never quitted such a sick-chamber without a hope 
that my last end might be like theirs. — Sir Henry Halford. 

FAITH SEES THE RESURRECTION. 

(The following lines were written by Sir Walter Raleigh the night before his execution.) 

E'en such is time ; which takes on trust 

Our youth, our joys, our all we have, 
And pays us but with earth and dust ; 

Which, in the dark and silent grave, 
When we have wandered all our ways, 
Shuts up the story of our days ; 
But from this earth, this grave, this dust, 
My God shall raise me up, I trust. 

FAITH BREAKS THE BONDAGE TO THE FEAR OF DEATH. 

It is right and profitable to let our thoughts run forward to 
the life that is to come ; but our main business is preparation for 
that life by forming our characters after the image of the heav- 
enly. By looking forward to the glorious society and the sinless 
services of heaven, we may be stimulated to greater diligence in 
the work of preparation. 

Preparation for heaven is preparation for death. If we are 
Christians, preparation for death has already been made. We 
are accounted, in view of the law, as righteous for Christ's sake, 



ALDEN—BR O OKS. 



14* 



and have the promise of being with Christ when we depart hence. 
Some one may say, " I must have a better preparation for death. 
I must lead a better life." No doubt every one who is not per- 
fectly holy ought to lead a better life. But will a better life pre- 
pare one for death ? Are we to avoid sin because we must die? 
or because the love of Christ constraineth us ? The most holy 
man on earth cannot trust to his own righteousness; he must 
rely on the perfect righteousness of Christ. 

Christians are not to be in bondage through fear of death. 
Some distress themselves by the anticipation of that solemn 
hour. They dwell upon the physical accompaniments of death, 
and the consequences which follow to those who are not saved. 
They cannot look upon the change without fear. 

This bondage can be broken by trusting in Christ. We are to 
rely upon him for grace for his daily service, and for grace in 
a dying hour. If we can trust him now, we can trust him then. 
—Joseph Aldcn, D. D., LL. D. 

TERRORS OF DEATH BANISHED. 

Here we are, we poor waifs upon the earth, — here with our 
fragments of existence, — here with the mystery of our beginning, 
and the half-understood purpose of our being here at all ; and 
dark, clear, inevitable before all of us there is looming up the 
mighty wall of death. In through its narrow door every one 
of the millions who have lived has passed. Up to that same 
door every one of us is walking. Each throbbing second is a 
footfall that brings us up a little nearer. And beyond ? Not 
one of those we have seen enter has come back to tell us what 
there is beyond, to tell us that there really is any such beyond 
as that at which our resolute, unreasonable vitality guesses and 
hopes in spite of all the darkness. This is man's life. Just 
think of it. And then, as you sit thinking of his fragmen- 
tariness, his certainty of death, his doubt about a future, let this 
voice come to you, a voice clear with personality, and sweet and 
strong with love : " I am he that liveth, and was dead; and am 
alive forevermore." (Rev. i. 18.) "He that liveth!" And at 
once your fragment of life falls into its place in the eternity of 



I 4 2 DEATH. 

life that is bridged by his being. " He that was dead ! " And 
at once death changes from the terrible end of life into a most 
mysterious but no longer terrible experience of life. " He that 
is alive forevermore ! " And not merely there is a future beyond 
the grave, but it is inhabited by One who speaks to us, who went 
there by the way that we must go, who sees us and can help us 
as we make our way along, and will receive us when we come 
there. Is not all changed ? The devils of discontent, despair, 
selfishness, sensuality, how they are scattered before that voice 
of the risen and everlasting Christ. — Bishop Pliillips Brooks. 

THE STING OF DEATH REMOVED. 

They who accept the offers of mercy, and who fly for refuge 
to the hope set before them, are taken into favor ; their sins are 
forgiven, and their names are written in the book of life. 
Over them death has no power. The King of Terrors is trans- 
formed into an angel of peace, to waft them to their native 
country where they long to be. 

This, O Christian ! the death of thy Redeemer, is thy strong 
consolation ; thy effectual remedy against the fear of death. 
What evil can come nigh to him for whom Jesus died ? Does 
the law which thou hast broken denounce vengeance against 
thee? Behold that law fulfilled in the meritorious death of thy 
Redeemer. Does the sentence of wrath pronounced against the 
posterity of Adam sound in thine ears ? Behold that sentence 
blotted out, that handwriting, as the Apostle calls it, cancelled, 
nailed to thy Saviour's cross, and left there as a trophy of his 
victory. Art thou afraid that the cry of thy offenses may rise to 
heaven and reach the ear of justice? There is no place for it 
there ; in room of it ascends the voice of that blood which 
speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. Does the 
enemy of mankind accuse thee at the judgment-seat? He is 
put to silence by thy Advocate and Intercessor at the right hand 
of the Father. Does death appear to thee in a form of terror, 
and hold out his sting to alarm thy mind ? His terror is re- 
moved, and his sting pulled out by that hand, which, on Mount 
Calvary, was fixed to the accursed tree. Art thou afraid that 



L OG AN— DICKENSON. 



143 



the arrows of Divine wrath, which smite the guilty, may be 
aimed at thy head ? Before they can touch thee, they must 
pierce that body, which, in the symbols of Divine institution, is 
held forth crucified among you, and which, at the right hand of 
the Majesty in the heavens, is forever presented in behalf of the 
redeemed. Well, then, may ye join in the triumphant song of 
the apostle, " O death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is 
thy victory ? " — John Logan, F. R. S. 

DEATH IS DEFEATED. 

" O grave, where is thy victory? " — I Cor. xv. 55. 

If some one had visited the once irresistible Bonaparte, in his 
exile at St. Helena, and taunted him with his impotence and 
overthrow, how could the crushed monarch have answered the 
cruel words? But had some one entered the Tuileries, when 
Napoleon was resting in confident ease after Austerlitz or Jena, 
and exulted in prospect of his downfall, he would have been 
treated as a madman. Yet here is Paul, in the midst of the 
triumphs of the great Destroyer, rejoicing over death's defeat. 
Paul wa3 like the supposed madman. To the eye of mere 
human sense, the great destructive force we call death has gone 
unhindered on until Paul seems utterly at his mercy. But to 
the eye of faith the defeat of death is of as certain accomplish- 
ment as the great Emperor's overthrow and exile are accom- 
plished historical facts. — C. M. J. 

THE POSSESSION OF DEATH. 

Death is yours. This is not to be associated with the pall, 
the shroud, the grave, but to be looked upon as a white-robed 
angel who undoes the bands which tether us, and opens the 
gate of glory. I never saw a Christian die without feeling in my 
heart that it would be gain to me to die. " It will be well with 
you soon," said one to a dying believer. With reproving em- 
phasis he exclaimed, " It is well with me now ! " Another who 
had been haunted with dread, said, as he passed away, "This 
is the brightest and best hour of my life; I am swimming in 
glory." Yes, death is yours. — A. E. Dickenson, D. D. 



I44 DEATH. 

CHRIST THE ARBITER OF DEATH. 

He holds the key of death. It rests with him to say when 
we shall pass the gate ; our times are in his hand. It rests with 
him to determine how and where we shall go. The earthquake 
supplies one door to the unseen world. At Lisbon, a century 
ago, in the course of six minutes, sixty thousand persons 
perished. The fortress and the battle-field are gates of death. 
At Arbela, three hundred thousand men marched through at 
one time. A few years since, Lombardy became one grand 
entrance to Hades. Another door is through the sea. " Hast 
ihou entered into the springs of the sea, or hast thou walked in 
the search of the depth ? Have the gates of death been opened 
unto thee, or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?" 
No, thou hast not ; yet tens of thousands have passed through 
that lower gate into the invisible world. 

The more usual entrance, however, is found within each man's 
own dwelling. It is through disease that, slowly or rapidly, 
Christ opens >the door for millions every year ; and when he 
points the way, who may hesitate, who can withstand ? The 
wounded Marshal Lannes, the hero of many a battle, when told 
he must die, and that nothing could save him, " Not save a Mar- 
shal ! " he exclaimed, "and a Duke of Montebello ? " No, 
Marshal ; an order has come from one higher than the Emperor, 
from the Prince of the kings of the earth. " There is no man 
that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit ; neither hath 
he power in the day of death ; and there is no discharge in that 
Avar." In the grave, in the world of disembodied spirits, the 
rich and the poor meet together : the Lord is the Maker of them 
all. — Rev. A. C. Thompsoit, D. D. 

BEAUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN'S DEATH. 

There is no endowment of genius, no lofty and impassioned 
utterance of human speech, which will make the close of life 
so beautiful, so glorious, as it will seem to you when you stand 
by the bedside of your dying friend, and see him bear all his 
sufferings without a murmuring word, surrender all earthly 
attachments without regret, calmly, trustingly, commend him- 






DANIEL MARCH. 



145 



self to the redeeming mercy, and so fall asleep in Jesus. The 
Christian family, whose members are thus going, one by one, 
in peace and triumph, from the earthly house to the house of 
many mansions on high, feel that heaven and earth are but a 
little way apart, and that they have friends and familiar acquaint- 
ances in both. And every time the close of a human life in 
this world is adorned with the beauty of peace and the glory 
of faith, death is disarmed of its sting, the victory is won from 
the grave, the blessed life is brought so near that the living own 
its worth and feel its power. 

We are all moving on in the same great procession to that 
unseen land from which none return. And it is not necessary 
for us to go like unwilling captives, bound to the chariot-wheel 
of all-conquering death. There is no occasion for us to lift up 
our voices in wailing and terror when the messenger comes to 
call us away. If we trust in Christ who giveth us the victory, 
our departure will be a triumphal march and the close of life 
will be a coronation. Oh, who would not wish to have the last 
stages of his earthly journey adorned with the surpassing grace 
and glory of Christian hope ? Who would not choose to pass 
away in light and joy as the leaves put on their loveliest hues 
when about to die — as the morning star melts into the superior 
glory of the coming sun — as the rosy dawn brightens into the 
full day ? Who would not wish, in dying, to take away the 
terror of death from the living, and to leave others to say, 
" Let my last end be like his ? " 

All this every one can do. The most glorious victory — the 
victory over death — is not one which conquerors and mighty 
captains alone can gain. The hand of a little child can strike 
the crown from the head of the king of terrors. The gifts of 
the divine love, which will fill our hearts with peace and clothe 
our countenances with light in the final hour, are freely offered 
to all. If we live unto God, we shall find it easy to die unto 
him. A peaceful and happy death is the natural close of a life 
well spent. If we walk with Christ, and delight ourselves with 
his company while the pleasures and temptations of the world 
are around us, he will not forsake us ^f hen the world has lost 
10 



I46 DEATH. 

its charm. He will clothe us with the robes of righteousness 
and we shall find ourselves at home among the princes of heaven. 
— Daniel March. 

For the death of the righteous is like the descending of ripe 
and wholesome fruits from a pleasant and florid tree. Our 
senses entire, our limbs unbroken, without horrid tortures ; 
after provision made for our children, with a blessing entailed 
upon posterity, in the presence of our friends, our dearest rela- 
tives closing our eyes and binding our feet, leaving a good name 
behind us. — Jeremy Taylor. 

For good men but see death ; the wicked taste it. — Johnson. 

DEATH A FRIEND. 

I have two friends in the world, Christ and death. Christ is 
my best friend ; death is my second. — Dr. Gouge. 

Death is a friend of ours, and he that is not ready to entertain 
him is not at home. — Lord Bacon. 

TRIUMPH IN DEATH AN EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Many a pastor called to the dying bed of saints, has had rich 
experience of the evidences of Christianity furnished there. Not 
only is he ready to declare, "Mors j anna vita" — death is the 
gateway of life — but he is reminded of Rev. iv. 1 : " I looked, 
and behold a door was opened in heaven ! " The chamber of 
the departing saint becomes the very vestibule of paradise, a 
place where new revelations are granted of the reality and verity 
of things unseen and eternal. 

Oftentimes the physical nature seems to become so refined 
of all coarseness and grossness by the discipline of disease, that 
it becomes translucent, almost transparent, and the holy thoughts, 
emotions, affections, that burn and glow in the soul within, shine 
through the attenuated veil of flesh, and illuminate and irradiate 
the face, and transfigure the whole person. One has a glimpse 
of the possible meaning of those words, " as He prayed, the 
fashion of his countenance was altered," " his face did shine as 



PIERSON— YO UNG— CLARK. 



H7 



the sun," and " his raiment was white and glistening ; " and as 
Moses and Elias talked with him of his decease, they were also 
transfigured. Perhaps the body of departing saints gives at 
such times hints of the possible delicacy and facility with which 
the resurrection body will express and transmit the emotions of 
the redeemed spirit. — Arthur T. Pierson, D. D. 

The chamber where the good man meets his fate 

Is privileged beyond the common walk 

Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven. 

Fly, ye profane S if not, draw near with awe, 

Receive the blessing, and adore the chance 

That threw in this Bethesda your disease : 

If unrestored by this, despair your cure ; 

For here resistless demonstration dwells. 

A death-bed's a detector of the heart ! 

Here tired Dissimulation drops her mask, 

Through Life's grimace that mistress of the scene! 

Here real and apparent are the same. 

You see the man, you see his hold on heaven, 

If sound his virtue, as Philander's sound, 

Heaven waits not the last moment; owns her friends 

On this side death, and points them out to men; 

A lecture silent, but of sovereign power ! 

To Vice confusion, and to Virtue peace. — Edward' Young. 

CAUSES OF THE CHRISTIAN'S TRIUMPH. 

The Christian's triumph results, first, from the removal of 
those causes which render death terrible. " The sting of death 
is sin." Never was truer sentence uttered. Sin pollutes the 
soul, brings guilt and condemnation, robs us of our faith, and 
then leaves us a prey to remorse, stricken with the terrors 
of coming retribution. Restore to us our moral and spiritual 
purity, bring back our lost faith in the Redeemer, and then to 
lie down in death would be attended with as few terrors as when 
we lie down to a night's repose. " Thanks be unto God that 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 

Again, the Christian's triumph results from the conviction that 
no harm can come to him while passing through the dark valley. 
He rests upon the promises of his God, and they, firm as the 



1 4 8 DEATH. 

eternal rock, are the unfailing support of his soul. " Thou art 
with me ! " The Christian goes not alone. His Divine Shep- 
herd, with his friendly crook and his spear of defence, attends 
him, and hides him from the evil. I wonder not that with his 
expiring breath he cries out, " I will fear no evil ! " 

Again, the Christian triumphs in death, because he looks upon 
it as the termination of present trials and sorrows, and the gate- 
way to endless joy. Here ends the weary pilgrimage ; now are 
past all conflicts, dangers, and struggles; uncertainty about 
destiny now ceases ; heaven is sure, and God is sure ; and while 
" the everlasting doors are lifted up," the ransomed spirit enters 
its blissful abode — -joins the angelic throng amid the welcomes 
of glorified spirits, flames in robes of living light, seizes the 
golden harp and strikes up the eternal anthem, " Unto Him that 
loved us and washed us in his own blood, to him be majesty 
and dominion, honor and glory, forever and ever ! " 

And still another reason for the Christian's triumph is that 
dying grace is given for the dying hour. It is the almost uni- 
versal experience of the righteous, that as death draws near, 
much as it may have been dreaded before, it loses much of the 
gloom which makes it terrible to the living. This triumph is no 
result of natural constitution, of established habit, nor even of 
strenuous effort ; for those who possess least of constitutional 
courage or philosophical firmness, often pass through the final 
ordeal with the most complete triumph over all their past fears 
and misgivings. No doubt the mind is divinely prepared, the 
Holy Ghost more abundantly infused, and a clearer conscious- 
ness given of the presence and favor of Christ. And, finally, 
who shall deny that ministering spirits are sent down from 
heaven to watch around the dying couch of the Christian, and 
to convey his ransomed spirit home to God ? When are minis- 
tering spirits more needed than when we walk through the 
dark valley? They gathered around the dying Lazarus, and 
carried him to rest in Abraham's bosom ; and so do they hover 
around the dying Christian, unseen by mortal eyes, unheard by 
mortal ears, breathing heavenly influence, shedding holy light 
upon the scene. — Bishop Davis W. Clark, D, D 



PO TTS—R OBER TSON. 



149 



(If the reader will refer to the death-bed scene of Bishop 
Clark, given elsewhere, it will be seen that the closing words of 
the above paragraph found literal fulfilment in the visions of his 
dying hour. — Editor) 

TRIUMPH NOT ALWAYS RAPTURE. 

It is a Christian's privilege to have victory over the fear of 
death. And here it is exceedingly easy to paint what, after all, 
is only the image picture of a dying hour. It is the easiest 
thing to represent the dying Christian as a man who always 
sinks into the grave full of hope, full of triumph, in the certain 
hope of a blessed resurrection. Brethren, we must paint things 
in the sober colors of truth ; not as they might be supposed to 
be, but as they are. Often that is only a picture. Either very 
few death-beds are Christian ones, or else triumph is a very 
different thing from what the term generally implies. Solemn, 
subdued, full of awe, and full of solemnity is the dying hour 
generally of the holiest men ; sometimes almost darkness. Rap- 
ture is a rare thing, except in looks and scenes. . . . Oh ! 
it is not only in these passionate effusions in which the ancient 
martyrs spoke sometimes of panting for the crushing of their 
limbs by the lions in the amphitheatre, or of holding out their 
arms to embrace the flames that were to curl around them ; it is 
not then only that Christ has stood by his servants and made 
them more than conquerors : there may be something of earthly 
excitement in all that. Every day his servants are dying mod- 
estly and peacefully, not a word of victory on their lips ; but 
Christ's deep triumph in their hearts, watching the slow progress 
of their own decay, and yet so far emancipated from personal 
anxiety that they are still able to think and plan for others, not 
knowing that they are doing any great thing. They die and the 
world hears nothing of them ; and yet theirs was the completest 
victory. They come to the battle-field, the field which they had 
been looking for all their lives, and the enemy was not to be 
found. There was no foe to fight with ! — F. W. Robertson. 



j to DEATH. 

DEATH CANNOT HARM THE GOOD. 

Oh ! cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, 
and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command ; for 
this is thy dominion ! But of the loved, revered, and honored 
head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or 
make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and 
will fall down when released ; it is not that the heart and pulse 
are still ; but that the hand was open, generous, and true ; the 
heart brave, warm and tender ; and the pulse a man's. Strike, 
Shadow, strike ! And see his good deeds springing from the 
wound, to sow the world with life immortal. — Dickens. 

DEATH CANNOT BREAK UP FRIENDSHIP. 

It is a hasty conclusion, and one which marks an inadequate 
apprehension of the nature of friendship, to say that we lose a 
friend when he dies. Death is not only unable to quench the 
genuine sense of friendship between the living and the dead ; it 
is also unable to prevent the going forth of a real feeling of 
friendship for the dead whom we have, it may be, never known 
at all. Goldwin Smith, in his new biography of Cowper, says 
of that poet : " There is something about him so attractive, his 
voice has such a silver tone, he retains, even in his ashes, such 
a faculty of winning friends, that his biographer and critic may 
be easily beguiled into giving him too high a place." Have we 
not an added help toward a kindly life in the thought that we 
may win new friends when our bodies are laid in the dust? — H, 
Clay Trumbull. 

WHY DO THE JUSTIFIED DIE? 

Justification changes the entire federal relation of its subject 
to the law, and raises him forever above all the penal conse- 
quences of sin. Death, therefore, while remaining a part of the 
penalty of the unsatisfied law in relation to the unjust, is like 
all other afflictions changed, in relation to the justified, into an 
element of improving discipline. It is made necessary for them 
from the present constitution of the body, while it is to both 
body and soul the gateway of heaven. They are made free 
from its sting and fear: I Cor. xv. 55, 57; Heb. ii. 15. They 



FLEMMING—HOD GE. 



151 



are now " blessed " in death because they " die in the Lord," 
Rev. xiv. 13, and they shall at last be completely delivered from 
its power when the last enemy shall be destroyed, I Cor. xv. 
26.— Prof. A. A. Hodge, D. D. 

Methinks I hear some pitying mother say, 

Why snatch a helpless infant thus away ? 

Why turn to clay that cheek on which was spread 

The lily's whiteness with the rose's red? 

Why close those ruby lips — those deep-fringed eyes? 

Why seize so young, so innocent a prize ? 

Hold ! hold ! nor murmur at the wise decree 

That set a lovely earth-born seraph free, 

And gave it bliss and immortality. 

D. Lambden Flemming, M. D 




CHAPTER VIII.— DEATH IN RELATION TO 
MAN'S HIGHER NATURE. 

m 

DEATH NOT ANNIHILATION. 

OW although the continued existence of any creature 
must depend simply upon the will of its Creator, that 
will may either be made known by direct revelation, or 
inferred in any particular instance by analogical reason- 
ing from what is known of his doings in other cases. 
As far as this argument from analogy goes it decidedly confirms 
the belief that a spiritual substance is, as such, immortal. The 
entire range of human experience fails to make us acquainted 
with a single instance of the annihilation of an atom of matter, i. e., 
of matter as such. Material bodies, organized or chemically com- 
pounded, or mere mechanical aggregations, we observe con- 
stantly coming into existence, and in turn passing away, yet 
never through the annihilation of their elementary constituents 
or component parts, but simply from the dissolution of that 
relation which these parts had temporarily sustained to each 



152 



DEATH. 



other. Spirit, however, is essentially simple and single, and 
therefore incapable of that dissolution of parts to which material 
bodies are subject We infer, therefore, that spirits are immortal 
since they cannot be subject to that only form of death of which 
we have any knowledge. — Prof. A. A. Hodge, D. D. 

DEATH NOT DESTRUCTION. 

We cannot argue from the reason of the thing, that death 
is the destruction of living agents, because we know not at all 
what death is in itself; but only some of its effects, such as the 
dissolution of flesh, skin, and bones. And these effects do in no 
wise appear to imply the destruction of a living agent. And 
besides, as we are greatly in the dark upon what the exercise 
of our living powers depends, so we are wholly ignorant what 
the powers themselves depend upon ; the powers themselves, as 
distinguished not only from their actual exercise, but also from 
the present capacity of exercising them ; and as opposed to their 
destruction ; for sleep, or, however, a swoon, shows us not only 
that these powers exist when they are not exercised, as the 
passive power of motion does in inanimate matter, but shows 
also that they exist when there is no present capacity of exer- 
cising them ; or that the capacity of exercising them for the 
present, as well as the actual exercise of them, may 'be sus- 
pended, and yet the powers themselves remain undestroyed. 
Since, then, we know not at all upon what the existence of our 
living powers depends, this shows further, there can no proba- 
bility be collected from the reason of the thing, that death will 
be their destruction ; because their existence may depend upon 
somewhat in no degree affected by death. 

Nor can we find anything throughout the whole analogy of 
Nature to afford us even the slightest presumption that animals 
ever lose their living powers ; much less, if it were possible, that 
they lose them by death ; for we have no faculties wherewith to 
trace any beyond or through it, so as to see what becomes 
of them. This event removes them from our view. — Bishop 
Butler, LL. D. 



ZSCHOKKE—S TALKER. x 5 3 

THE SOUL SURVIVES DEATH. 

Time and eternity are the same to God. But they are likewise 
so to me. Why make this distinction ? There is but one Eter- 
nal. After death I shall be in eternity, but I am already in it. 
After death I shall be with God ; but here below already I live 
and move, and have my being in God. 

However with that intensified vital action, which we call death, 
an active process of separation and renewed combination takes 
place in all my component parts. As in Autumn the vital force 
leaves the withering plant, so in death the spiritual part of my 
being withdraws from the earthly part. That within me, which 
I call my real self, and which is capable of conceiving God, 
enters into combination with other substances and things in the 
life-teeming universe. But my discarded body, which returns to 
dust, also continues in God's universe, and enters into other 
combinations. And I, the God-conscious I, the conceiving and 
perceiving spirit, I also, like the dust of my body, shall continue 
through all eternity. 

Am I a different being to-day to what I was yesterday, 
because I have put on other garments ? No ; for though I may 
yesterday have worn an inferior dress, and to-day a better one, 
I am nevertheless the same being. And as little as the raiment 
which I wear forms part of myself, as little does the body form 
part of the spirit, which in death puts it off. But the same as I 
have been while clad in the body, the same shall I be after 
having entered into other combinations. For I am and remain 
the same spirit, in like manner as my body remains the same 
dust. Consequently from the brief space of time which we call 
earthly life, I pass over into the higher or lower, happier or un- 
happier relations into which I may hereafter enter, a worthy or 
unworthy spirit, according as I may have proved myself in this 
world. — Zsclwkke. 

THE SOUL'S PROGRESS UNCHECKED BY DEATH. 

While it is true that there is an unexplored border-land be- 
tween body and mind, it is also true that no rational explanation 
can be given of the origin of mental phenomena on the principles 



154 DEATH. 

of materialism ; while the doctrine of man's dual nature explains 
all the facts of his being. As, therefore, we see man manifest- 
ing two classes of phenomena, we conclude that he is a com- 
posite being and belongs to two worlds, the external and internal, 
the sensuous and supersensuous, whose centre is God. And 
when the psychical attributes of our nature find their true rela- 
tion to God and man, to the visible and invisible worlds, and are 
sanctified by divine grace, regulated by God's law and guided 
by the Divine Spirit, the verdict of consciousness concerning the 
capability of the soul to exist apart from the body will be clear 
and strong. 

We are told that Goethe stood one day with Eckerman, on 
the Weimar road, at a point from which the outlook was 
majestic. Together they gazed in wrapt attention at the setting 
sun. The great poet and philosopher tremulously exclaimed : 
" Setting, nevertheless the sun is always the same sun. I am fully 
convinced that our spirit is a being of a nature quite indestruc- 
tible, and that its activity continues from eternity to eternity." 
Thus Goethe correctly interpreted the great facts of man's being. 
The soul may set — it may go down into the unseen realm, 
nevertheless it is always the same soul. So that while it may be 
true that we have no experience of the continuance of conscious 
existence beyond the grave, it is also true that we have no ex- 
perience of death, and yet we are led by an irresistible induction 
to the conclusion that we shall die. By precisely the same logic 
we conclude that thought, consciousness, and will, are resi- 
dents of an indestructible nature. Man is conscious of using 
his body as he would use a machine. His will is the great 
moving power. Yet his body is in a state of flux ; it is con- 
stantly changing. But the mind remains the same. The law of 
change, to which the body is subject, does not break the unity, 
or destroy the identity of the Ego, as that unity and identity are 
not residents of the body, but in the essence of consciousness. 
Here, then, is a palpable fact, the soul asserting its indestructi- 
bility amid the changes of the body, and demonstrating its 
supremacy over physical laws, thus furnishing ground for a 
strong inference that death cannot stop its progress. 

Rev. Thomas Stalker. 



B UTLER— TA YL OR. j 5 5 

DEATH NOT A SUSPENSION OF LIVING POWERSo 

There appears so little connection between our bodily powers 
of sensation and our present powers of reflection, that there is 
no reason to conclude that death, which destroys the former, 
does so much as suspend the exercise of the latter, or interrupt 
our continuing to exist in the like state of reflection which we 
do now. For suspension of reason, memory, and the affections 
which they excite, is no part of the idea of death, nor is implied 
in our notion of it. And our daily experiencing these powers to 
be exercised, without any assistance, that we know of, from those 
bodies which will be dissolved by death ; and are finding often 
that the exercise of them is so lively to the last; these things 
afford a sensible apprehension that death may not, perhaps,, 
be so much as a discontinuance of the exercise of these powers, 
nor of the enjoyments and sufferings which it implies ; so that 
our posthumous life, whatever there may be in it additional to 
our present, yet may not be entirely beginning anew, but going 
on. Death may, in some sort, and in some respects, answer to 
our birth, which is not a suspension of the faculties which we 
had before it, or a total change of the state of life in which we 
existed when in the womb, but a continuation of both, with such 
and such great alterations. Nay, for aught we know of our- 
selves — of our present life, and of death — death may imme- 
diately, in the natural course of things, put us into a higher and 
more enlarged state of life, as our birth does ; a state in which 
our capacities and sphere of perception and of action may be 
much greater than at present. — Bishop Joseph Butler, LL. D. 

THE POWERS OF LIFE INTENSIFIED AT DEATH. 

If a future change in our condition be of a very extensive and 
important kind, we are very apt to suppose that, even if our con- 
sciousness of identity be not impaired by the event, our ordinary 
modes of feeling, and our characteristic sentiments and tastes, 
will none of them remain the same. From previously entertain- 
ing these delusive expectations it happens, when we come 
actually to pass through some such important revolution of 
personal condition, that our first emotions are not so much those 



i 5 6 



DEATH. 



of surprise at the greatness of the change as of disappointment 
at the small extent to which it has affected our usual sensations, 
and at finding how little customary personal consciousness has 
been disturbed. We feel ourselves possessed of the same familiar 
self — of the same peculiarities of taste, and that the very same 
moral and mental habits have passed on within us, through the 
hour of transition, from one condition of life to another; nor can 
we say that this transition, in itself, has made us more wise or 
virtuous, or that it has enhanced, by so much as a particle, our 
personal merits; although it may have enlarged our range of 
action, and perhaps have added to our means of enjoyment. 

Now we may reasonably imagine that it will be precisely thus 
in the moment of our passage from the present to another mode 
of existence. The several powers of life shall have become more 
intense in their activity, our consciousness of being will have 
been expanded; the faculties will no longer labor and faint at 
their tasks, or relapse exhausted ; life will burn clear and steady, 
and will need no replenishing; but yet the inner man — the indi- 
vidual — the moral personality, will be untouched: the remem- 
brance of yesterday and its little history will be distinct and 
familiar, and we shall come to an instantaneous conviction of the 
momentous practical truth, that the physical and the moral na- 
ture are so thoroughly independent, one of the other, as that the 
greatest imaginable revolution passing upon the former, shall 
leave the latter simply what it was. — Isaac Taylor. 

THE MEMORY IN DEATH. 

In the quickened action of the soul, in death, the memory 
seems to retrace its past history in the inverse order of the actual 
occurrence of its events. Taking the present as the point of its 
departure, it goes back through all the gradations of life to 
childhood and infancy. 

The celebrated Dr. Rush mentions the case of an Italian gen- 
tleman who died of y<Tiow fever in the city of New York. At 
first he spoke English; as his disease progressed he spoke only 
French; but on the day of his death the attendants were com- 
pelled to converse with him in Italian — the language of his 



CLA RK—DISRAEL I. 



i5> 



childhood. The same gentleman also states that a Lutheran 
clergyman of Philadelphia informed him that Germans and 
Swedes, of whom he had considerable numbers in his congrega- 
tion, when near death, always prayed in their native languages, 
though some of them had not spoken these languages for fifty 
or sixty years. 

With another class of persons, dying moments are not unfre 
quently the occasion for the resurrection of abused privileges 
and perverted blessings. To the guilty conscience 

" It is the busy, meddling fiend 
That will not let it rest." 

From the burial-places of memory these recollections stalk 
forth to foreshadow his doom, and to strike deep into the soul 
the conviction that it is just. 

Others again, calmly dying, have spoken of the incidents of 
their lives as being all simultaneously presented before them as in 
a magic mirror — every line as if fixed upon a tablet by the light, 
with all the exactitude and distinctness of present reality. 

These manifestations of intellectual and spiritual perception, 
in the hour of death, seem to be but the first movement of that 
mighty expanding of intellectual power which shall characterize 
our transition from time to eternity. These facts, therefore, 
make it highly probable that thought is absolutely imperish- 
able; and that whatever is written once upon the memory lives 
there forever. — Bishop Davis W. Clark, D. D. 

THE IMAGINATION IN DEATH. 

The certainty of an immediate separation from all our human 
sympathies may, even on a death-bed, disorder the imagination. 
The great physician of our times told me of a general, who had 
often faced the cannon's mouth, dropping down in terror when 
informed by him that his disease was rapid and fatal. Some 
have died of the strong imagination of death. There is a print 
of a knight brought on the scaffold to suffer; he viewed the 
headsman; he was blinded, and knelt down to receive the 
stroke. Having passed through the whole ceremony of a crimi- 



i 5 8 



DEATH. 



nal execution, accompanied by all its disgrace, it was ordered 
that his life should be spared. Instead of the stroke from the 
sword, they poured cold water over his neck. After this opera- 
tion the knight remained motionless; they discovered that he 
had expired in the very imagination of death. Such are among 
the many causes which may affect the mind in the hour of its 
last trial. — Isaac Disraeli. 

If I must die, I'll snatch at everything 

That may but mind me of my latest breath ; 
Death's heads, graves, knells, blacks, tombs, all these shall bring 
Into my soul such useful thoughts of death, 
That this sable king of fears v 
Shall not catch me unawares. — Quarles. 

Death itself is less painful when it comes upon us unawares 
than the bare contemplation of it, even when danger is far dis- 
tant.— Pascal. 

THE SPIRITUAL FACULTIES QUICKENED. 

From the nature of the soul, the spirit of faith, and the specific 
teachings of revelation, we are constrained to believe that death 
here is birth into the spiritual world with advanced conditions 
of being and intensified consciousness. Our conviction on this 
point finds support, not more in the common belief of its truth 
by Christians than in the almost universal experiences of saints 
in the article of death. The soul seems to acquire strange and 
marvelous strength about the time of its departure. As the 
spiritual world approaches, the spiritual consciousness is singu- 
larly quickened. At the moment when, from physical weak- 
ness and prospect of quitting earth and familiar forms and loved 
friends, and of passing into unknown conditions, in every way 
filling the imagination with dread, we would expect doubt and 
dismay, the soul becomes suddenly filled with preternatural 
strength; the life that has been all along clouded with fear and 
uncertainty culminates in the very moment of its overthrow in 
triumphant assurance ; death, that was always dreaded, is hailed 
with shouts of welcome; the last moments are not unfrequently 
spent in exultant and rapturous statements of the revelation of 



FOSTER— PA YSON. ^o 

hitherto unseen glories, and of the coming and presence, not 
unfrequently, of well-known and most beloved friends. To 
children, and saintly women, and gifted sages, the vision of 
Stephen is repeated in wondrous variety and fulness. Even 
before they enter through the veil the life beyond envelops them 
in its lustre, and words of farewell are lost in speeches and looks 
addressed to the unseen (by us) multitudes who have come to 
welcome them home. — Bishop R. S. Foster, D. D., LL. D. 




CHAPTER IX.— DEATH IN RELATION TO 
THE FUTURE LIFE. 

WHAT DEATH INTRODUCES TO. 

HE soul when it leaves the body will find itself in a 
moment in the presence of the great Sun of the uni- 
verse, whose beams, like a torrent, pervade immensity 
and eternity. Sun, moon, and stars will all have van- 
ished. Earth and its objects will appear to have been 
suddenly annihilated, and God, God alone, will rush in upon 
the mind and fill every faculty, occupy every thought. Above 
and below, behind and before, wherever the mind can turn itself 
or whithersoever roam, it will still find itself in the immediate 
presence of God ; nor, if I may so express it, can the eyelids 
of the soul ever close for an instant to shut out the dazzling 
refulgence of his glory. As companions in admiring, or in 
shrinking with despair from, these glories, the soul will per- 
ceive itself to be surrounded by myriads of created spirits of 
opposite characters, and will quickly find that the same Gjd 
who to holy spirits is refreshing, animating light, is to the un- 
holy a consuming fire ; that what is heaven to the one, is hell 
co the other. — Edward Pay son. D. D. 



l6o DEATH. 

THE GREAT CHANGE. 

Your bodies must be changed. In a few years, of all thfc 
bodies which now fill this house, nothing but a few handfuls of 
dust will remain. Your mode of existence will be changed. 
Your disembodied, but still living, spirits will pass into a new 
and untried state of being. Your place of residence will be 
changed. The places which now know you will soon know 
you no more. Another assembly will fill this house. Other 
inhabitants will dwell in your habitations. Other names will 
glitter over the marts of business, and yours will be transferred 
to the tombstone. And when this world has lost you, another 
will have received you. After you are dead and forgotten here, 
you will be alive, and capable of exquisite happiness or misery 
elsewhere. After you are removed from all the objects which 
now affect you, a new world, new objects, new beings will rise 
upon you, and affect you in a manner far more powerful than 
you are or can be now affected. Above all, when this world 
and all that it contains sink from your view, God, that Being 
of whom you have heard so much, and, perhaps, thought so 
little — that Being who formed and now invisibly surrounds and 
upholds you will burst in upon and fill your mind, fill it with 
delight inconceivable or agony unutterable, according to the 
state of your moral character. And as it affects you the moment 
after death, so it will continue to affect you forever ; for neither 
his character nor yours will ever change. Long after all remem- 
brance of you shall have been blotted from the earth, during all 
the remaining centuries which the sun may measure out to 
succeeding generations of mortals, you will still be bathing 
with delight or writhing in agony in the beams of Jehovah's 
presence. — Edward Pay son, D. D. 

NEARNESS OF THE INVISIBLE. 

How strange is this feeling of a spiritual world, an invisible 
realm, that gathers so closely around the Christian heart near 
the hour of death ? All along through life we are in the midst 
of the invisible, stepping on its very verge. Bright forms are 
around us unseen ; ministering angels guard our footsteps. But 



SIMPSON— YO UNG. 1 6 1 

when the eye is clear, the ear is quick, the limbs are strong, the 
heart beats regularly, and the nerves are trained for intense 
action, the visible fills our thoughts, commands our time and 
energies. But when the charms of earth fade, the system loses 
its power, the hour of action has gone, how sweetly steals over 
the soul thoughts of the presence of unseen forms, and how near 
may man feel to the throne of God ! When the work of Stephen 
was ended, though in the active hours of his strength, yet he 
saw the heavens opened, and Jesus standing on the right hand 
of God. Paul, in his prison hours, had glimpses of the glorious 
crown of righteousness reserved for him. Dying saints, in all 
ages, have felt a nearness to a glorious realm. But as we read 
of such scenes cheering the martyrs or the apostles, or the 
leading minds of earth, we may possibly fancy that such greet- 
ings do not meet the Christian in the ordinary walks of life ; 
but when in our own families or in our own circle of friends, 
we see the lovely, the frail, the delicate, as they pass away grow 
strong in faith and love, and hope, as they listen to voices call- 
ing from the spirit land ; as bright visions of the future rise be- 
fore them, heaven seems to draw near to earth, and we almost 
feel that we, too, have friends in light who may be hovering 
around us. To those of us who know the deep pang of part- 
ing with loved ones of our family, who know the shadow which 
grief casts over the household, and feel a loneliness because the 
voice of a loved one is no longer heard, what a consolation to 
think of the associations of heaven ! — Bislwp Simpson. 

Death is the crown of life ! 

Were death denied, poor man would live in vain: 
Were death denied, to live would not be life : 
Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die. 
Death wounds to cure ; we fall, we rise, we reign ! 
Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies, 
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. 
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost-. 
This King of terrors is the Prince of Peace. 
When shall I die to vanity, pain, death ? 
When shall I die? — when shall I live forever? 

Edward Young 
II 



162 DEATH. 

DEATH CONNECTS TIME AND ETERNITY. 

Death is a mystery when we look at it as simply the termina- 
tion of life. We cannot answer a thousand questions that gather 
round us, that shadow our minds and our hearts when we come 
into the presence of death. Why was one so endowed to be cut 
down ? Why at such a time, and under such circumstances ? 
Why amid such pain, and agony, and suffering ? Why to leave 
smitten hearts and loved ones ? O, how many questions press 
upon us when we think of Death and his works ! But Christi- 
anity presents death as a sleep ; not as the French philosophers 
call it, an eternal sleep. " We shall not all sleep ; we shall all 
be changed." It is said that they who sleep in Jesus will God 
bring with him. This sleep in Jesus is the Christian's sleep — 
sleep in the faith of Jesus as our Saviour — in the faith that he is 
our resurrection and life. He who dies thus with faith in Christ 
hath a sure hope of eternal life, and of a glorious immortality 
at God's right hand. I never seem to myself to have eternity 
and time so joined — as if I were standing right on the line — as 
I do when taking the hand of a loved one, and seeing the light 
of the eye go out, and the mind, which shortly before was as 
acute as ever, suddenly beclouded, and he is gone. How is it 
that this step is taken ? I cannot believe that there is any lack 
of consciousness ; I cannot believe there is any failure of 
memory; I cannot believe there is any lack of interest in 
what is beautiful, and lovely, and glorious in the past ; I cannot 
believe that scenes and ministries of earth have died from that 
heart which is still, or that feelings, were it possible, would not 
have utterance, though the lips are mute. To me, as I grow 
oVbr, the other world seems nearer. More and more of my 
(ncnds are crossing ; more and more of the loved ones are 
passing over the river. So many that took you and me by the 
hand have just gone beyond the current; but I believe they are 
not very far from us. — Bishop Simpson. 

Death is a commingling of eternity with time ; in the death of 
a good man, eternity is seen looking through time. — Goethe. 



BEECHER—BAILE Y— THOMAS. ^3 

DEATH A LIFTING UP. 

I love to think that what seems to be the mystery of the 
silence of death, which envelops so many that we loved on 
earth, is not really a mystery. Our friends are separated from 
us because they are lifted higher than our faculties can go. Our 
child dies. It is the last that we can see of him here. He is 
lifted so far above us that we cannot follow him. He was our 
child; he was cradled in our arms; he clambered upon our 
knees. But instantly in the twinkling of an eye, God took him» 
and lifted him up into his own sphere. And we see him not. 
But it is because we are not yet developed enough. We can 
not see things spiritual with carnal eyes. But they who have 
walked with us here, who have gone beyond us, and whom we 
cannot see, are still ours. They are more ours than they ever 
were before. We cannot commune with them as we once could 
because they are infinitely lifted above those conditions in which 
we are able to commune. We remain here, and are subject to 
the laws of this realm. They have gone where they speak a 
higher language, and live in a higher sphere. But this silence 
is not the silence of vacuity, and this mystery is not the mystery 
of darkness and death. Theirs is the glory ; ours is the waiting 
for it. Theirs is the realization ; ours is the hoping for it. 
Theirs is the perfection; ours is the immaturity striving to be ripe. 
And when the day comes that we shall disappear from these 
earthly scenes, we shall be joined to them again ; not as we were 
— for we shall not then be as we were — but as they are, with 
God. We shall be like them and him. — Beecher. 

Death is another life. — Bailey. 

DEATH A BIRTH. 

It seems to me, if we get a correct view of death, that it is 
only another form of birth — a kind of upward movement instead 
of downward. Before we came into this world we had our life 
in connection with the life of our mothers ; we drew our life from 
our mothers. And after reaching a point, where it was possible 
to live independent of our mothers, we came into this world, 



164 



DEATH. 



and found ourselves here in bodies, which are only a kind of 
walking matrix, in which the higher life is being developed. 
Separated from our maternal life, there is another umbilicus, the 
air, that seems to bind us to the great life we are now living. 
We enter upon this higher and wider life by breathing ; we hold 
it by breathing, and we live in this walking matrix, receiving 
strength from our vaster mother, nature, and we seem to develop 
until it is severed, and we are born up into a higher life. So it 
looks to me as I contemplate this strange mystery of life. It 
seems to me that when this life goes out, we are born into some 
condition of being that is higher. If we take this view of the 
subject, it relieves what we call dying of much of the unneces- 
sary darkness and gloom that has been thrown about it. It 
reminds me of a beautiful allegory I have somewhere read. It 
is related that a tree heard one of its leaves crying, and coming 
to the leaf, asked it what it was crying about. And the leaf said 
that the wind had told it that the time would come when it must 
be blown away. Then the tree told the branch, and the branch 
told the leaf to dry its tears ; it should not die, but should con- 
tinue to sport itself in the summer breeze and the summer sun- 
shine. But after a while the leaf saw a silent change coming 
over its fellow-leaves. They gradually put off their modest 
green, and were decked in hues of purple and gold. It looked 
upon this dress of beauty, and upon its own familiar green, and 
it began to cry again, and the branch told the tree that the leaf 
was crying, and the tree came again to see about what the leaf 
was crying. And the leaf said : " The other leaves are dressed 
in garments of beauty, while I keep on my old garment of 
green, and I cry." Then the tree told the leaf that this change 
of dress would be put off to-morrow, and that it might now, if 
it wished, put on these garments. And thus the leaf was per- 
mitted to put on the golden hues, and the winds of autumn came, 
and soon it was borne away. 

So, my friends, much as we dread the autumn and winter of 
death, we might well weep if we had forever to stay down in 
these lower worlds, in these feeble bodily conditions, down at 
the bottom of this ocean of atmosphere, when the worlds of 



THOMAS— CLARK. 



I6 5 



beauty roll on forever in immensity, and souls are rising and 
casting off their garments of dust, and passing away. Let us 
rather rejoice that, having had a birth that brought us into this 
state, and a development as far as possible, we may welcome the 
approach of the hosts of joy, dressed in garments woven by 
angel fingers; welcome the lines that time brings about the eye; 
welcome the weight of years that begins to press us down ; 
welcome the weakness of age, the decay of strength, the dim- 
ness of sight, the dulness of hearing ; and even let the cold 
winds of winter and the hot suns of summer hasten the process, 
for it is only the wearing out of the body, the putting on of 
garments for the evening, the getting ready for the morning ; 
and then will come the whisper by and by : " You have travelled 
long enough, you have toiled long enough; now lay down the 
burden, gather up your feet, and go to the vaster realm above 
and beyond." — H. W. Thomas, D. D. 

BELIEVERS CATCH GLIMPSES OF GLORY IN DEATH. 

I have often thought, not from the indulgence of a vagrant 
fancy, but from what I have myself witnessed at a dying bed, 
that sometimes, before the soul of the believer is disengaged 
from the body, the glories of Paradise are partially disclosed to 
his view, and that the distant tones of its hymns of sweetest 
melody burst upon his ravished ear; that, hovering as it were 
midway between earth and heaven, he catches a glimpse of the 
spiritual world before he leaves the material. Thus it is, as it 
were, on the summit of Mount Nebo where the believer's last 
battle is to be fought, when he is already within hearing of the 
songs of Zion. Faint not, suffering believer, the promised land 
is full in view before thee. Hearest thou not those heavenly 
voices which are cheering thee on to victory? Be assured, this 
is no transient view, which is but set before thee, and then 
snatched away forever. Thou wilt soon be permitted to descend 
into the goodly land beyond Jordan, and enter the New Jerusa- 
lem with songs, and everlasting joy upon thy head. — Rev. W. 
B. Clark. 



1 66 DEATH. 

Though a believer may have his darkness, doubts and fears, 
and many conflicts of soul while on his dying bed, yet usually 
these are all over and gone before his last moment comes. 
From the gracious promises of God to be with his people even 
unto death, and from the observations I have made through the 
course of my life, I am of opinion that generally the people of 
God die comfortably, their spiritual enemies being made to be 
as still as a stone while they pass through Jordan. 

John Gill, D. D. 

DEATH AS VIEWED BY THE PRIMITIVE CHRISTIANS. 

The primitive Christian's view of death, as shown by the in- 
scriptions in the Roman Catacombs, is always in striking con- 
trast to the sullen resignation or blank despair of paganism — 
full of cheerfulness and hope. The grave is considered merely 
as a temporary resting-place of the body, while the freed spirit 
is regarded as already rejoicing in the presence of God, in a 
broader day and brighter light and fairer fields than those of 
earth. The following translations will illustrate the pious ortho- 
doxy of those early Christian epitaphs : 

"She departed, desiring to ascend to the etherial light of 
heaven," a. d. 383. " Eutuchius, wise, pious and kind, believ- 
ing in Christ, entered the portals of death, and has the reward 
of the light of heaven," a. d. 393. " Here sleeps in the sleep of 
peace the sweet and innocent Severianus, whose spirit is received 
into the light of God." " Refrain from tears, my sweet daughters 
and husband, and believe that it is forbidden to weep for me who 
lives with God," A. d. 472. " Here lies Urbria, ever agreeable 
and modest, she lived a speaker of truth ; she rests free from care 
throughout endless time," A. d. 397. 

We find also such expressions as : " He sleeps but lives ; " 
" He reposes in the Lord Jesus; " " He went to God ; " " Called 
by God ; " "Accepted with God ; " " Thou didst not leave the 
sweet light, for thou hadst with thee him who knows not death " 
— literally, "the all deathless One;" "Agape, thou livest for- 
ever ; " " The soul lives, unknowing of death, and consciously 
rejoices in the vision of Christ ; " " Prima, thou livest in the 



WITHR O W—BEE CHER. 



167 



glory of God, and in the peace of Christ our Lord." Of the 
early Christians, Chrysostom writes : " They say not of the de- 
parted, 'he is dead,' but he is perfected." — Homily in Matt. 68. 

The hope of the resurrection is often strongly expressed: 
" Here rests my flesh ; but at the last day, through Christ, I 
believe it will be raised from the dead." " I believe, because 
my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day shall raise me from the 
earth, that in my flesh I shall see the Lord." 

The very idea of death seems to have been repudiated by the 
early Christians. "JVon mortua sed data somno" sings Pruden- 
tius — " She is not dead but sleepeth." Hence the catacomb was 
designated the " ccemeterium" or "place of sleeping." 

W.H. Withrow y M.A. 

NOT HUMILIATION, BUT EXALTATION. 

When companions, friends and children die, the spiritual sense 
of their presence is more potent than before. We realize the 
purer spirituality of that friend. Memory and thought recon- 
struct our friends, and make them present to us in an ineffable 
perfection. The air is populated with our departed friends. 1 
think more of my father than I did when he was alive, and think 
of his nobler part. Our friends have had leave to go up higher. 
As we grow in our various departments of labor and go up, so 
they have gone up to the heavenly state. All our tenderness 
and soul-groping after them is not for nothing. God not only 
raises up new friends, but makes those that are absent ministers, 
ministering to those who are heirs of salvation. 

There are other thoughts of death — not those in relation to 
our losses, but in reference to our own dying. I would not 
have you think of death with gloomy, ignoble views of it. Of 
the dark room, the long sickness, coughing, coughing, taking 
porridge, sitting about in an arm-chair — all those things that 
belong to the decadence of human life are low and poor, and 
not to be cherished in your imagination or thought. Such 
thoughts are morbid — to think how one will look in the coffin. 
Such thoughts are barbarous, savage and heathenish. 



16$ DEATH. 

I avow again, as I have before, may God give me a sudden 
death: I would rather have it instantaneous as lightning than 
like consumption, idiocy, or paralysis, although I hope I am 
willing to go to heaven through such a pass as that, but I would 
rather die with the harness on, in the midst of the battle. But 
as to the time, manner and place, that's God's will, not mine. 
Dying to me is not humiliation, but exaltation — emerging from 
that which is nothing but an egg, into the plenitude of power, 
into hope, into waves of affection and soul-loving, that shall sat- 
isfy the amplitude of yearning in that direction. The nightingale 
has not an idea that the whole neighborhood is charmed with 
its song. So the soul in heaven. Groups and bands of men can 
sing and intersphere with each other's joy. Death is not to be 
unclothed to get rid of this burden and trouble, or this or that 
sin, but is the culmination of grace in conferring love — man- 
hood, God-like manhood, and grand manhood. It is not going 
through an alley soot-black and smutchy, nor through a gate 
with a grim jailer, who turns a rusty key in the door, but through 
Milton's pearly gate on golden hinges turned, it is the flight of 
a bird, every wing-beat higher and higher in a purer culture. It 
is like a bath to the soul. It shall mount up and be clear of the 
grime and dust of the world, and in a purer sky it can move joy- 
fully to and fro. 

As when we go where our friends are we are more tender and 
happy, so in your thoughts of dying: let men ask, "What makes 
you so happy?" "Why, I was thinking about dying." That's 
the Christian view of death. Do not let your thoughts of death 
be so gloomy that after them one would think it was a hole, a 
chimney-flue, you had been going through. I shall not die 
downward toward hell, but upward toward heaven. So let us 
shake the tree of life, that the leaves of it will drop down for the 
healing of the nations. — Beecher. 

THE SPIRIT ACTIVE BEYOND DEATH. 

When that which is immortal within us outstrips the earthly 
coil — when the thinking, freely willing, spontaneous power 
within us, which is subject to special laws of its own, and which 



ZSCHOKKE— CLARK. Y §g 

we call our spirit, our real self, takes leave of the body, — then 
the vital power ceases to perform its functions, and the body 
perishes. 

But in the same manner as these forces and life-impulses 
always find new materials which they work into new forms, so 
also the noblest of all forces, the immortal spirit, called to 
freedom, to bliss, and to eternal endurance, doth clothe itself in 
a new vesture. It neither sleeps nor dies when the first body 
passes away ; and it will not fail to find a new veil in which to 
shroud itself, w r hen called, perhaps, to act more gloriously, more 
perfectly, in the sphere of eternal existence. It must be so, — 
for naught perishes. What is death ? Nothing more than trans- 
formation. The dead flower is transformed into dust, which in 
time becomes parts of other flowers. And in like manner as the 
blind life-force, acting according to the eternal laws of God, con- 
tinues without ceasing, so also the free spirit of man, when 
relieved of its earthly coil. Thus this world is to us a dark- 
ened mirror of eternity. — Zschokke. 

THE SPIRIT RETAINS ITS HUMAN FORM. 

The Scriptures most clearly recognized this grand truth ; for 
wherever the dead are spoken of, or represented as making 
their appearance upon earth, they are uniformly referred to as 
being in their appropriate human form. Hence it is that recog- 
nition and identification take place. This idea has prevailed in 
all ages. The heathen poets and philosophers thought and 
wrote of the shades of their departed friends appearing as when 
tabernacled in the flesh. It is the universal conception of 
human nature. It is an unconscious element of that faith in the 
heart of the Christian which exults in the confident expectation 
of seeing the loved ones who have gone into eternity, when he 
also shall have crossed over the irremeable flood. So does the 
Bible represent Dives to have seen and recognized Abraham 
and Lazarus, and them also to have recognized him ; so were 
seen Moses and Elias; and so the great multitude around 
the throne of God were seen by St. John. Their form, their 
words, their actions, all marked them as having been once 



170 



DEATH. 



beings of earth, in spite of all the transformations of circum- 
stance, and time, and place. They were disembodied; new 
scenes enchanted them ; new glories blazed upon them ; every- 
thing was wondrously new; but through all the human and 
personal were visibly and distinctly marked. 

The demand of this sentiment is met when we come to the 
recognition of the departed. Identity is what we want ; nature 
craves for identity, and Scripture gives back the response that 
assures us this identity shall remain. All the anticipated glories 
of a reunion with the departed are enhanced by this prospect. 
The form may be vastly improved, infinitely more glorious, but 
it will be the same. Our friends or our children, who have been 
absent from us a few years, sometimes become so changed that 
we do not at first recognize them, though their general form and 
identity are the same. So may it be with our friends in heaven. 
Our aged parents, who totter with halting step and wasting 
frame to the grave, may there be rejuvenated and glowing with 
celestial life. Our children, nipped like the buds of spring, may 
be so changed in the transition and by the rapid growth of 
heaven that it may be necessary for some attendant angel to 
point them out before we could recognize their beautiful forms. 
It shall gladden our eyes, as we emerge from the gloom of the 
dark valley, to behold how glorious they have become, and to 
receive their welcomes to the land of everlasting bliss. 

"And ere thou art aware, the day may be 
When to those skies they'll welcome thee." 

Bishop D. W. Clark, D. D. 

THE SPIRIT RETAINS ALL DESIRABLE KNOWLEDGE OF EARTH. 

Of all things, a departing soul has least cause to fear losing 
the knowledge of worldly affairs. If the sun gives light and 
heat to the earth, why should I think that blessed spirits have no 
acquaintance with earthly concerns ? From the top of a hill I 
can see more than from below ; and shall I know less of earth 
from heaven, than I do now ? It is unlikely that my capacity 
will be so little ; or that Christ and all the angels will be so 
strange to me, as to give me no notice of things so interesting 



BAXTER— THOMPSON. l y I 

to my God and Redeemer, to the holy society of which I am 
a member, and to myself as a member of that society. Spirits 
are most active, and of quick and powerful communication. 
They need not send letters, nor write books, nor lift up a voice. 
And as activity, so unity is greatest, where there is most perfec- 
tion. Their knowledge, love, and joy, will be one. My celestial 
advancement, therefore, will be no diminution, but an incon- 
ceivable increase of my desirable knowledge of things on earth. 
If, indeed, I shall know less of things below, it will be 
because the knowledge of them is a part of vanity and vexation, 
which have no place in heaven. I need not be afraid to hear 
any more of bloody wars, desolated countries, dissipated 
churches, persecuted Christians, silenced preachers, party con- 
flicts, contentious divines, censorious professors of religion, with 
the cries of the poor, or the endless complaints of the melan- 
choly. — Richard Baxter, D. D. 

THE MORAL CHARACTER UNCHANGED BY DEATH. 

Is there anything in death to change the moral character? 
All we know of death is that it disorganizes the body ; but sin is 
not in the body, but the soul. All changes analogous to 
death leave the soul unchanged ; such are sleep, swoon, sus- 
pended animation. Let a man go to the very door of death 
and be brought back, he is the same in character as he was be- 
fore the wheels of life were arrested. No dissolution or combi- 
nation of the mere carbon and hydrogen of our bodies can alter 
the moral nature of the soul. 

It is said that in the necropolis of ancient Egypt there have 
been found two kind of mummies — one from which the vital 
organs have been removed, the other complete. Dr. Grus- 
selbach, an eminent Swedish chemist, professor of the University 
of Upsal, has come to the conclusion that the Egyptian mum- 
mies are not all bodies embalmed for death, but that some are 
the bodies of individuals whose life has been momentarily sus- 
pended, with the intention of restoring them, at some future time, 
the process of which has become lost. The professor has been 
experimenting with a view to this lost art. For example, he 



XJ2 



DEATH. 



benumbed a snake, as if it had been carved in marble, and 
it was so brittle that had it dropped it would have broken to 
pieces. After keeping it in this state for years, he restored it 
to life. For fifteen years this animal under his hand has been 
undergoing a series of deaths and resurrections. He has peti- 
tioned the government for a criminal condemned to death, to 
be subjected to a similar process. Suppose the professor's 
theory to be correct, and the art of restoration be recovered, 
and applied to one of those mummies in the age of Pharaoh, 
would not the restored man, judging from all the analogies we 
have, be just such as he was when his life was suspended ? The 
changes in the world would have wrought no changes in him; 
he would speak the language, maintain the principles, breathe 
the spirit with which he died. — Bishop Edward Thompson, 
D.D. y LL.D. 

CHARACTER CONTINUETH FOREVER. 

Character is an edifice which every man is building for him- 
self to live in forever. We are all building up ourselves. There 
is no escape from this sort of architecture. We must do it. 
We are doing it. The only question is how. We can build of 
" wood, hay, stubble," or of " gold, silver, precious stones." We 
can build a hovel or a palace. In our idleness and in our ac- 
tivity — in our reckless and 'in our thoughtful hours — all the 
while, the house we live in- is rising. Nero built up himself as 
truly as did Paul. The houses of character we build we must 
live in. They are never " For Sale," nor " To Let." Each ad- 
mits but two tenants, the one myself, the other — who ? My best 
friend or my worst enemy, the " friend that sticketh closer than 
a brother," or the " enemy of all righteousness." All through 
life a man's character is his one inseparable companion. He 
may cross the sea and leave at once his friends, his enemies and 
his country; he may leave his business and his pleasure, but 
himself he cannot leave. To all the eternity the same truth 
holds. 

" He that is unjust let him be unjust still." " Whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap." " Say ye to the righteous, 
it shall be well with him, for he shall eat the fruit of his doings." 



FOSS—HARBA UGH. r y ^ 

"Work out your own salvation " then, because it is your own. 
Do not forget that when the great decisive day is past, you 
shall, while God lives, be pierced with the remorseful self-con 
sciousness. " Me miserable ! Which way shall I fly ? Which 
way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ! " or thrilled with the eternal 
and eternally increasing rapture of your redemption song : 
" Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his 
own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and 
his Father ; to him be glory and dominion forever and ever."— 
Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, D. D. y LL.D. 

IDENTITY PRESERVED. 

When we awake from the swoon or sleep of death, or emergt 
through the change of death into the realities, circumstances, 
and affinities of another life, we suppose our first feeling will be 
that of consciousness of our own identity. We will feel and 
be conscious that we are ourselves and not another. This we 
can only do in connection with our past history. It may be the 
work of an instant, but still it involves a process by which the 
mind connects itself with what is past, and recollects its previous 
existence. Thus, for instance, we spend a night in the house 
of a friend; we wake in the morning suddenly, and scarcely 
know where we are or who we are. The mind at once enters 
upon a process of discovery by self-recollection ; to do this it 
goes back and calls up its past history, remembers the way in 
which it has come, and soon full consciousness of itself and its 
relations is restored. So in the other world, after the change 
of death, a consciousness of identity must in some way be pre- 
served. Suppose, however, that in the case of the person just 
instanced, sleeping in the house of his friend, the room should 
be furnished in a certain way when he lay down to sleep, and 
the furniture should be entirely removed and changed while he 
slept, the difficulty of coming to a consciousness of his identity 
would be greatly increased. In that case it would become 
necessary for him to depend upon pure recollection of the past 
in the way of thought and memory. This must be the case 
with our souls in passing through the change of death ; we will 
find ourselves in new relations, circumstances, and affinities, 



174 



/DEATH. 



and our consciousness oi personal identity can continue only as 
it feels itself the living continuation of the past. — Harbaugh. 

SPIRIT-CONSCIOUSNESS. 

By spirit-consciousness we mean the self-consciousness of a 
disembodied spirit. This, like the self-consciousness of an em- 
bodied spirit, is purely intuitive. In it the mind operates in 
thinking, feeling, and willing. This must not be confounded 
with personal identity, which involves the additional exercise of 
memory. Personal identity is the conscious unity of past self 
and present self through the twofold exercise of personal self- 
apprehension and recollection. 

Consciousness belongs to spirit. God is a self-conscious 
being, and " God is a spirit." Again, " He maketh his angels 
spirits." Were we to deny to God and angels a perfectly 
self-conscious existence we would argue them out of exist- 
ence. So also St. Paul describes man as a "spirit, soul, and 
body" (i Thess. v. 23), and St. James declares that "the body 
without the spirit is dead " (James ii. 26). Many texts might 
be quoted to show that man is a spirit, and that as such — not as 
a body — he was made in the " image and likeness of God." 

But man's self-consciousness while in the body hardly affords 
a criterion by which to judge of the intensity and power of his 
self-consciousness when out of the body. For, though while in 
the body he is capable of purely spiritual operations, his mind 
is subject to physical limitations and conditions. Just as in 
sense-perception, or the operations of the mind through the five 
bodily senses, there are frequent interruptions arising from de^ 
fective bodily conditions, so we may suppose the higher 
mental operations to be similarly influenced. Indeed, we know 
this to be true. So completely is the action of the mind subject 
to the powers of the body, that in some cases there are no man- 
ifestations of any intelligent exercises at all. Says Professor 
Upham (Mental Philosophy, p. 183): "It is well known that 
there is a connection existing between the mind and the body, 
and that a reciprocal influence is exercised. It is undoubtedly 
true, that the mental action is ordinarily increased or diminished 
according as the body is more or less affected." 



POTTS— ZSCHOKKE. \ f$ 

Therefore, what self-consciousness, in all its fullness and 
power, is in a disembodied state remains to be experienced. 
That it will be in kind as the consciousness of the Great Spirit, 
and of angelic spirits, is altogether probable. That it will not 
be broken or circumscribed by the imperfect workings of a 
physical nature is evident. 

" That which is born of spirit is spirit, and seems 
All ear, all eye, all feeling, and all heart ; 
A crystal shrine of life." 

The great multitudes of redeemed souls which John saw while 
on Patmos were possessed of a glorious self-consciousness. 
Their exalted condition was an ever present theme, and the 
knowledge of their salvation prompted to loud and joyous 
ascriptions of praise to him who had redeemed them. Paul was 
once mid-way between the two conditions of being, on the boun- 
dary line, as it were, betwixt pure spirit consciousness and bodily 
self-consciousness, so far, at least, towards the glorified state 
that he was quite as ready to think himself a disembodied 
spirit as a tenant of the earthy tabernacle, and he says he 
" heard unspeakable things which it is not lawful for a man to 
utter." If such be the impression made upon the. spirit in 
catching a momentary glimpse of the splendors of the third 
heavens, what must be the thrilling realization of the soul when 
granted an abundant entrance into the glorious kingdom of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ! — J. H. Potts. 

HOW DIFFERENTLY DOES DEATH APPEAR. 

Now what is it to die ? It is generally said to be a passing into 
eternity ; but here already we are dwelling in eternity. It is a 
transition from the finite earthly relations into a higher, more 
blissful, to us incomprehensible, state ; it is a change into a new 
mansion of the Father of all ; it is the exchange from a place 
in a cradle into a place on the bosom of the Father. How 
differently does not death now appear to us ! It is not annihila- 
tion but completion; not cessation, but continuation. The 



176 



DEATH. 



loved ones whose loss I lament are still in existence ; they a/e 
living with me at this very time ; they are, like myself, dwelling 
in the great paternal mansion of God ; they still belong to me as 
I do to them. We are not separated. No time lies between us ; 
for I, like they, dwell in eternity, rest in the arms of God. As 
they are ever in my thoughts, so, perhaps, am I in theirs. As I 
mourn for their loss, perhaps they rejoice in anticipation of our 
reunion. What to me is still dark, they see clearly. Why do 
I grieve because I can no longer enjoy their society? During 
their lifetime I was not discontented because I could not always 
have them around me. If a journey took them from me, I was 
not therefore unhappy. And why is it different now? They 
have gone on a journey. Whether they are living on earth in a 
far distant city, or in some higher world in the universe of God, 
what difference is there ? Are we not still in the same house of 
the Father, like loving brothers who inhabit separate rooms ? 
Have we therefore ceased to be brothers ? — Zschokke. 

" I bless thee, O God," that I am capable of dying ; that I am 
appointed to die, and that the execution is drawing near. 

Adams. 
WHY NOT THINK BETTER OF DEATH? 

If we are reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, what recon- 
ciling views of death does this open up ? Why not think 
better and oftener of death ? No doubt his hand is rough, and 
his voice is gruff; and, rudely seizing us by the throat, as if he 
were the officer and we the prisoners of justice, he shows none* 
of the courtly manners of Eleazer when he went to fetch a bride 
to Isaac; yet why should those things make us overlook the 
glittering crown he bears in his grisly hand, and the message he 
brings us — to come away home ? We should familiarize our 
minds with this event, and train ourselves to think of it more as 
glory than as death ; as returning to our Father and our 
Father's house ; as going home to be with Jesus and the saints 
— or, if you will have death in, as the death of all sin and sorrow; 
the death of Death. To a child of God, what are its pains but 
the pangs of birth; its struggles, but the battle that precedes 



THOMAS GUTHRIE. 



W 



the victory ; its tossings but the swell and surf that beats on the 
shores of eternal life ; its grave but a bed of peaceful rest, where 
the bodies of saints sleep out the night which precedes the 
glories of a resurrection morn ? I know a church-yard where 
this is strikingly set forth in the rude sculpturing of a burial 
stone. Beneath an angel figure, that, with outstretched wings and 
trumpet, blows the resurrection, there lies a naked skull. Beneath 
him and beside this emblem of mortality, two forms stand ; one 
is the tenant of the grave below, the other it is impossible to 
mistake — it is the skeleton figure of the King of Terrors. His 
dart lies broken on the ground, and the hand that has dropped 
it, is stretched out over the skull, and held in the grasp of the 
other figure. Enemies reconciled ! the man bravely shakes 
hands with death — his whole air and port showing that they are 
sworn friends. As if he had just heard Jesus announcing, "I 
am the resurrection and the life," you seem to hear him say, " O 
death, where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ? " 

— Thomas Guthrie. 

THE DEATHLESS LIFE. 

" This mortal shall put on immortality." 

Clothed with immortality ; 

What will it be ? What will it be ? 

A sudden shiver — 

Then deathless ever. 



Clothed with immortality ; 

How strange 'twill be ! How strange 'twill be ! 

A sweet confusion, 

Almost illusion ! 

Clothed with immortality ; 

How soon 'twill be ! How soon 'twill be t 

The eyelids fall 

Has witnessed all ! 

Clothed with immortality ; 

When will it be? When will it be ? 

Haste, dear Lord Jesus ; 

From death release us. — Watchword. 

12 



1^8 DEATH. 

BEYOND. 

Beyond life's toils and cares, 
Its hopes and joys, its weariness and sorrow, 
Its sleepless nights, its days of smiles and tears. 
Will be a long sweet life unmarked by years, 

One bright unending morrow. 

Beyond time's troubled stream, 
Beyond the chilling waves of death's dark river, 
Beyond life's lowering clouds and fitful gleams, 
Its dark realities and brighter dreams, 

A beautiful forever. 

No aching hearts are there, 
No tear-dimmed eye, no form by sickness wasted 
No cheek grown pale through penury or care, 
No spirits crushed beneath the woes they bear, 

No sighs for bliss untasted. 

No sad farewell is heard, 
No lonely wail for loving ones departed, 
No dark remorse is there o'er memories stirred, 
No smile of scorn, no harsh or cruel word 

To grieve the broken-hearted. 

No long, dark night is there, 
Nor light from sun or silvery moon is given, 
But Christ, the Lamb of God all bright and fair P 
Illumes the city with effulgence rare, 

The glorious light of heaven. 

No mortal eye hath seen 
The glories of that land beyond the river, 
Its crystal lakes, its fields of living green, 
Its fadeless flowers and the unchanging sheea 

Around the throne forever. 

Ear hath not heard the songs 
Uf rapturous praise within that shining portai. 
No heart of man hath dreamed what bliss belongs 
To that redeemed and joyous blood-washed throng, 

All glorious and immortal. — Mrs. J E. Aker 




A consideration of the last words and behavior of persons of all ages, 

countries, and conditions ; dying in the palace, mansion, and 

cottage, at the stake, on the block, in the street, and 

under the influence of different beliefs. 

[179] 



" Death is come up into ourwindows, and is entered into 
our palaces, to cut off tine children from without, and the 
young men from the streets."— Jeremiah ix. 21. 

"The air is full of farewells to the dying." 

— H. W. Longfellow, 

(180) 




CHAPTER I.— PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 

THE DYING COMPARED WITH THOSE WHO ONLY THINK THEM- 
SELVES DYING. 

HILE attending medical lectures at Philadelphia, I heard 
from the lady with whom I boarded an account of 
certain individuals who were dead, to all appearance, 
during the prevalence of the yellow fever in that city, 
and yet recovered. The fact that they saw, or fancied 
they saw, things in the world of spirits, awakened my curiosity. 
. . . After this I felt somewhat inclined to watch, when it 
became my business year after year to stand by the bed of 
death. ... I was surprised to find that the condition of 
mind in the case of those who were dying, and of those who only 
thought themselves dying, differed very widely. I had supposed 
that the joy or the grief of death originated from the fancy of 
the patient, one supposing himself very near to great happiness, 
and the other expecting speedy suffering. My discoveries 
seemed to overturn this theory. Why should not the professor 
of religion who believes himself dying when he really is not, 
rejoice as readily as when he is departing, if his joy is the off- 
spring of expectation ? Why should not the alarm of the 
scoffer who believes himself dying and is not, be as uniform and 
as decisive as when he is in the river, if it comes of fancied evil 
or cowardly terrors? The same questions I asked myself again 
and again. I have no doubt that there is some strange reason 
connected with our natural disrelish for truth, which causes so 
many physicians, after seeing such facts so often, never to observe 
them. During twenty years of observation, I found the state of 
the soul belonging to the dying was uniformly and materially 
unlike that of those who only supposed themselves departing. 
This is best made plain by noting some cases which occurred. 

(181) 



1 82 THE DYING. 

1. There was a man who believed himself converted, and his 
friends, judging from his walk, hoped with him. He was seized 
with disease, and believed himself within a few paces of the gate 
of futurity. He felt no joy, his mind was dark, and his soul 
clouded. His exercises were painful, and the opposite of every 
enjoyment. He was not dying. He recovered. He had not 
been in the death-stream. After this he was taken again. He 
believed himself dying, and he was not mistaken. All was 
peace, serenity, hope, triumph. 

2. There was a man who mocked at holy things. He became 
seriously diseased, and supposed himself sinking into the death- 
slumber. He was not frightened. His fortitude and composure 
were his pride and the boast of his friends. The undaunted 
firmness with which he could enter futurity was spoken of ex- 
ultingly. It was a mistake. He was not in the condition of 
dissolution. His soul never had been on the line between two 
worlds. After this he was taken ill again. He supposed as 
before that he was entering the next state, and he really was ; 
but his soul seemed to feel a different atmosphere. The horrors 
of these scenes have been often described, and are often seen. 
I need not attempt to picture such a departure here. The only 
difficulty in which I was thrown by such cases was, " Why was 
he not thus agonized before, when he thought himself departing? 
Can it be possible that we can stand so precisely on the dividing 
line, that the gale from both this and the coming world may 
blow upon our cheek ? Can we have a taste of the exercises of 
the next territory before we enter it ? " When I attempted to 
account for this on the simple ground of bravery and cowardice, 
I was met by the two following facts. First I have known those 
— the cases are not unfrequent — who were brave, who had stood 
unflinching in battle's whirlpool. They had resolved never 
to disgrace their system of unbelief by a trembling death. 
They had called to Christians in the tone of resolve, saying, " I 
can die as coolly as you can." I had seen those die from whom 
entire firmness might fairly be expected. I had heard groans, 
even if the teeth were clenched for fear of complaint, such as I 
never wish to hear again, and I had looked into countenances, 
such as I hope never to see again. 



DAVID NELSON, M. D. Y %% 

Again, I had seen cowards die. I had seen those depart who 
were naturally timid, who expected themselves to meet death 
with fright and alarm. I had heard such, as it were, sing before 
Jordan was half-forded. I had seen faces where, pallid as they 
were, I beheld more celestial triumph than I had ever witnessed 
anywhere else. In that voice there was a sweetness, and in 
that eye there was a glory, which I never could have fancied in 
the death-spasms, if I had not been near. 

The condition of the soul, when the death-stream is entered, 
is not the same with that which it often becomes when it is 
almost passed. The brave man who steps upon the ladder 
across the dark ravine, with eye undaunted and haughty spirit, 
changes fearfully, in many cases, when he comes near enough 
to the curtain to lift it. The Christian who goes down the 
ladder pale and disconsolate, oftentimes starts with exultation, 
and tries to burst into a song when almost across. . . . 

Many who enter the dark valley cheerless, begin to see some' 
thing that transports ; but some are too low to tell of it, and 
their friends think they departed under a cloud, when they 
really did not. It is at this stage of the journey that the enemy 
of God, who started with look of defiance and words of pride, 
seems to meet with that which alters his views and expecta- 
tions ; but he cannot tell it, for his tongue can no longer move. 

David Nelson, M. D. 

THE DYING NEVER WEEP. 

It is a striking fact that the dying never weep. The sobbing, 
the heart-breaking agony of the circle of friends around the 
death-bed, call forth no responsive tears from the dying. Is it 
because he is insensible, and stiff in the chill of dissolution? 
That cannot be, for he asks for his father's hand, as if to gain 
strength in the mortal struggle, and leans on the breast of his 
mother, sister, or brother, in still conscious affection. Just 
before expiring, he calls the loved ones, and, with quivering lips, 
says, " Kiss me ! " showing that the love which he has ever 
borne in his heart is still fresh and warm. It must be because 
the dying have reached a point too deep for earthly sorrows, too 



I§4 



THE DYING. 



transcendent for weeping. They are face to face with higher 
and holier things, with the Father in heaven and his angels. 
There is no weeping in that blessed abode to which he is has- 
tening. — Anon. 

WHY DO THE DYING NEVER WEEP? 
Even a mother who is leaving a helpless family does not 
weep, — does not weep though the children are crying bitterly at 
her side. When friends are to be separated from each other for 
a long period they mutually shed tears; yet in the case before 
us, where there is to be a like separation, the dying shed no 
tears, though the living do. This explanation may be offered : 
The dying have their mind impressed at a different point from 
that of the living. The natural feelings are forced into the back- 
ground, because now the higher emotions are compelled to act 
with reference to the great verities of existence. Fear, awe, per- 
haps an element of doubt, penitence, a sense of nothingness, a 
prayer travelling through the soul made up of many desires, — 
these holding the immortal spirit with a new power. The start- 
ling fact that I am to lose my life ; that I am to enter an entirely 
new state — eternity; that I am to appear before a God of justice, 
— such pressing realities forming what seems like an original 
consciousness. The soul is waiting with trembling suspense the 
moment when it shall leave the body, and have its fate fixed 
forever ; the mere natural sympathies therefore are kept down. 
A feeling of solitude hems in the trembling spirit, and it looks 
steadily at one point. The decaying body also affects the mind. 
Tears are not so natural as they once were. But with the living 
all is different. The soul and body have a degree of freshness. 
The thought of life is before the mind. The mighty experiment 
of entering upon the scene of future being is not to be made 
just now. The simple fact, therefore, that one we love is about 
to be taken away from us, arouses the sympathetic nature. The 
man who stands upon the scaffold to be hung will not shed 
tears, although his friends will. The awful realities that crowd 
about the mind of the criminal seem to petrify that mind ; tW 
friends are differently situated, and so they weep. 

Rev. John Reid. 



SHAKESPEARE— TENNYSON. j 85 

FORCE OF DYING WORDS. 

O, but they say the tongues of dying men 

Enforce attention like deep harmony : 

Where words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain, 

For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. 

He that no more must say is listened more 

Than they whom youth and ease have taught to glose; 

More are men's ends marked than their lives before : 

The setting sun and music at its close, 

As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last, 

Writ in remembrance more than things long past: 

Though Richard, my life's counsel would not hear, 

My death's sad tale may yet undeaf his ear. — Shakespeare. 

Every man at time of death 
Would fain set forth some saying that may live 
After his death and better human kind ; 
For death gives life's last words a power to live, 
And, like the stone-cut epitaph, remain 
After the vanished voice and speak to men. — Tennyson. 



CHAPTER II.— DYING TESTIMONIES AND 
LAST WORDS. 

HOW DR. DAVID LIVINGSTONE DIED. 

! HE fame of Livingstone, Africa's great explores, is im- 
perishable. His bold, tireless, numerous, and resultfm 
expeditions through the jungles of the Dark Continent 
make up a record of heroism, philanthropy, and sacrifice 
which can never be forgotten. A Scotland paper has 
the following tender account of the last hours of this great and 
good man : During the last days of April, 1873, he was very ill. 
He had plaintively said to his men : "Build me a hut to die in. 
I am going home!' In that hut at Ilala, on the night or the 
30th of April, in great pain and weakness, he had been ten- 
derly laid upon the couch by his faithful followers. About 
four in the morning, a negro, who was watching beside him, 




1 86 THE DYING. 

called out to " Susi," who, with five more of his men, hastened 
into the hut. A candle, stuck by its own wax on the top of a 
box, gave light enough to see that Dr. Livingstone was not in 
the bed, but kneeling by the side of it, his body stretched for- 
ward, and his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. For 
a minute they watched him. He did not stir. There was no 
sign of breathing. Then one of them, Matthew \ went softly to 
him, and laid his hands upon his cheek. Life had been gone 
some time. The body was almost cold. Dr. Livingstone was 
dead. On his knees at the throne of grace that noble spirit 
had ended his pilgrimage, and entered in through the gates into 
the city. His poor, shrivelled body, preserved in salt, was 
carried to the coast, a distance of more than a thousand miles, 
by his humble but affectionate body-guard of black men, every 
one of whom was a liberated slave. "A grander and more touch- 
ing memorial," as was well said at the time, " than any tomb 
that can be raised to his honor in Westminster Abbey." 

DYING UNBELIEVERS AND WORLDLY PERSONS. 

It was an observation of Joseph Addison that " there is noth- 
ing in history which is so improving to the reader as those 
accounts which we must write of the deaths of eminent persons 
and of their behavior in that dreadful season." Dying words 
have all the legal force of sworn testimonies. Nay, more, the 
dying testimony of a witness, other things being equal, is held 
to have greater weight than any he may have rendered in a 
court of law. It is not presumable that a man will consciously 
equivocate with the chasm of eternity yawning at his feet and 
the sword of divine justice flashing before his dying eyes. In 
this light let us view the last words of some noted persons who 
have died without the consolations of religion. Cesare Borgia, 
an Italian prelate and soldier of the fifteenth century, whose 
career was marked by thorough worldliness, if not traced in 
havoc and blood, being sick unto death, sorrowfully said : " When 
I lived, I provided for everything but death ; now I must die, 
I am unprovided to die." This was the dagger in his heart, 
as it is in the heart of all who feast their bodies but starve their 



J. H. POTTS. Xg^ 

souls. Philip the Third, king of Spain, seriously reflecting upon 
the life he had led, cried out, in death : "Ah, how happy should 
I have been, had I spent in retirement those twenty-three years 
during which I have held my kingdom ! My concern is not for 
my body, but for my soul." " Thou hast conquered me, O Gal- 
ilean ! " was the yielding outcry of Julian the Apostate. Car- 
dinal Wolsey, one of the greatest ministers of state, poured 
forth his soul in these sad words : " Had I been so diligent in 
serving my God, as I have to please my king, he would not 
have forsaken me now in my gray hairs." " O my poor soul, 
whither wilt thou go ? " was the humiliating inquiry to his own 
spirit of Cardinal Mazarin. " I am taking a fearful leap in the 
dark ! " was the last despairing exclamation of the infidel Hobbes. 
Voltaire, also, who expended the energies of a great mind in 
attempts to overthrow the Christian religion, complained in 
dying that he was " abandoned by God and man." Frequently 
he would cry out : " O Christ ! oh, Jesus Christ ! " His physi- 
cian withdrew in terror, as did also Marshal de Richelieu, and 
his nurse ever afterwards refused to wait upon the sick, for 
" fear of witnessing another such scene as the death of Voltaire." 
For nearly half a century Talleyrand figured prominently in the 
affairs of Europe, engrossing his mind with gigantic political 
questions which determined the boundaries of empires and the 
fate of mighty men. Just before his death, after an eventful 
life of fourscore years, a paper was found on his table containing 
such expressions as these : " Behold, eighty-three years passed 
away ! What cares ! What agitation ! What anxieties ! What 
ill-will ! What sad complications ! And all without results, ex- 
cept great fatigue of mind and body, and a profound sentiment 
of discouragement with regard to the future, and disgust with 
regard to the past." Behold in yonder Roman palace the 
world-renowned Cardinal Antonelli wrestling with the agonies 
of death. Bound in the remorseless tyranny of an anti-Christian 
system, " without a drop of joy for his fevered lips, deadly pale 
and shivering with dismay, shrinking back with a great dread 
from the coming stroke of dissolution," he can do no other 
than cower at the feet of a pretentious hierarch, imploring the 



1 88 THE DYING. 

poor comfort of a ceremonial absolution. Lord Gibbon said: 
" The present is a fleeting moment, the past is no more, and 
my prospects of the future are dark and doubtful." When 
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, a professed atheist, whose 
life was coursed in folly, drew near to the gates of death, he 
remarked to his physician : " You see, my dear doctor, the 
apprehensions of death will soon bring the most profligate to 
a proper use of their understanding. In my life, to purchase 
a smile from a blockhead, whom I despised, I have frequently 
treated the virtuous with disrespect, and sported with the holy 
name of Heaven. Now I am haunted by remorse, despised by 
my acquaintance, and, I fear, forsaken by my God." David 
Hume, who, by his writings, won a world-wide fame as a phi- 
losopher, and not less so as an infidel, died a death of the greatest 
stolidity, a fact which has been the boast of infidelity ever since. 
The fact is easily accounted for. The heart of David Hume 
was as hard as his principles could make it. Trained in early 
life by a Christian mother, he, in turn, became her anti-Christian 
instructor, and was the cause of her apostasy from the faith. 
While he was abroad, his mother was stricken down, and when 
it became evident she could not survive, she dispatched a letter 
to him saying that she found herself " without any support in 
her distress ; that he had taken away that only source of com- 
fort upon which, in all cases of affliction, she used to rely, and 
that now she found her mind sinking in despair ; she did not 
doubt that her son would afford her some substitute for her 
religion; and she conjured him to hasten to her, or at least to 
send her a letter containing such consolations as philosophy 
could afford to a dying mortal." Hume was greatly perplexed 
by this intelligence, and travelled night and day to reach her 
bedside, but before he arrived she was dead. To an unyielding 
heart, like Hume's, the natural tendency of such an experience 
was, as it proved, complete petrification. 

The death of Altamont, as described by Dr. Young, and pub- 
lished in " Death-bed Scenes," is one of the most affecting ever 
witnessed. The lips of the dying man were constantly charged 
with the most denunciatory and remorseful expressions of his 




Assassination of the Duke of Buckingham. 



J. H. POTTS. j8g 

<?wn guilt and folly, and the frowning aspect of eternity before 
him. A friend at his bedside whom he loved, and whom he 
had ruined, was moved to tears at his deplorable condition, 
observing which, he said : " Keep those tears for thyself. I 
have undone thee. Dost weep for me ? That's cruel. What 
can pain me more?" 

Here his friend, too much affected, would have left him : " No, 
stay, thou still mayest hope. Therefore hear me. How madly 
have I talked! How madly hast thou listened and believed! 
But look on my present state as a full answer to thee and to 
myself. This body is all weakness and pain : but my soul, as if 
stung up by torment to greater strength and spirit, is full pow- 
erful to reason, full mighty to suffer. And that which thus 
triumphs within the jaws of mortality, is, doubtless, immortal. 
And, as for a Deity, nothing less than an Almighty could inflict 
what I now feel." Refusing to be interrupted, he continued : 
" My much injured friend! my soul, as my body, lies in ruins — 
in scattered fragments of broken thought. Remorse for the 
past throws my thoughts on the future; worse dread of the 
future strikes them back on the past. I turn, and turn, and 
find no ray. Didst thou feel half the mountain that is on me, 
thou wouldst struggle with the martyr for his stake, and bless 
heaven for the flame : that is not an everlasting flame ; that is 
not an unquenchable fire." Before the understanding of this 
unhappy man failed, and his wretched spirit passed to God, he 
cried out in the very anguish of despair: "My principles have 
poisoned my friend; my extravagance has beggared my boy; 
my unkindness has murdered my wife! And is there another 
hell? O! thou blasphemed, yet most indulgent, Lord God! 
Hell itself is a refuge, if it hide me from thy frown!" 

Thus, by the rack of nature, is extorted even from the lips of 
infidels, the fundamental articles of the Christian's creed. And 
death cometh, soon or late, to every human being. Youth, 
beauty, strength, skill, power, courage, or wickedness, is no 
guard against his final conquest. And it is a momentous event, 
not so much in itself as in its issues. Heubner has remarked 
that what " makes death so dreadful is the consciousness of sin, 
and the fear of damnation." 



190 



THE DYING. 



In our youth we had access to books containing descriptions 
of terrifying death-scenes of unbelievers. The impression pro- 
duced was that such experiences were connected with the long 
ago, that none were passing away at the present time in the 
manner therein depicted. But this impression proved to be 
erroneous. Our earliest experience in ministerial life dissipated 
the illusion. We were called to minister to Christless souls in 
agonies a thousand-fold more terrible than pen ever described. 
We shall not attempt here to describe what is indescribable. 

" The pains, the groans, the dying strife " 

of unsolaced souls in the bitterness of dissolution have frightened 
away thousands of attendants. Thomas Paine groaned day and 
night, so that his attendant could not snatch a moment of sleep. 
Being reminded of the fact, he said, — " I have no rest myself, 
nor shall you have." Mr. Paine was a noted infidel, and the 
remark, therefore, was recorded, but people are dying every day 
in similar anguish. 

" O sir," pleaded one unconverted lady, " I am dying, dying 
unsaved ! Help me ! ask God to have mercy ! Pray for me 
now! I am going — unsaved — it is too late — but pray!" We 
kneeled at that bedside, whose occupant was an entire stranger, 
but had scarcely begun to open the case before the throne of 
grace, ere the stifled voice and gasping breath told that the 
terrified spirit was with its Maker. Some professed unbelievers, 
when in the last mortal agony, are not slow to retract the sen- 
timents they advocated while in health and strength. In the 
village of Galesburg, Michigan, lived one Dr. Alfred, an avowed 
infidel, and a practising physician of considerable repute. His 
delight seemed to be in forcing religious discussions upon 
Christian ministers and others. He had once made a profession 
of religion and sought to enter the regular ministry, but for 
some reason was rejected. This embittered his heart, and he 
turned at once in the direction of open unbelief. His erudition 
was a source of dangerous strength. His boldness in the use 
of infidel methods of attack was an annoyance to the better class 
of his townsmen. He had selected a class of Scripture texts 



J. H. POTTS. IO ,l 

which he wrested most mercilessly to the injury of religion and 
his own good name. But stout and bold as Dr. Alfred was, and 
familiar as he was with the scenes of the death-chamber, when 
the grim and terrible King knocked at his own door with the 
message, " Thou shalt die and not live," he was completely un- 
nerved. His pastor, Rev. David Engle, now of Muskegon, 
Michigan, sends us the particulars of the closing scene : 

" I was pastor at Galesburg when Dr. Alfred died. He did 
retract his sentiments. The character of my relation to him, 
and the circumstances of his death are as follows : when I first 
became acquainted with him, he was a zealous advocate of 
infidel views. On almost every occasion of our meeting he 
sought to draw me into a discussion of some theological ques- 
tion. These discussions would sometimes close with a tinge of 
bitterness; and, finally, I said: 'Doctor, I will meet you as a 
friend and citizen, and will treat you as such, but will argue no 
more with you, because it is worse than profitless.' He never 
approached me again on the subject of religion until just before 
his death. When first taken sick he was very singularly affected. 
He lost the power of speech, and also, in some respects, his 
powers of mind; yet he was perfectly conscious of everything 
that transpired in his presence, or was said in his hearing. 
While in this condition I visited him a number of times, and 
spoke to him of his affliction, of his business, and of his friends, 
but did not feel at liberty to introduce the subject of religion. 
He always appeared glad to see me, and would frequently shed 
tears when I spoke to him. Subsequently his disease changed 
so that he recovered the power of speech. I continued my 
visits, talked with him freely, but never upon religious themes. 
Before he died I was attending a Sunday-school picnic about a 
mile from town. A messenger came in great haste saying, that 
Dr. Alfred was dying and wished to see me. I hurried to his 
bedside. He said : ' I am so glad to see you. I am going to 
die, and I want to talk with you before I go.' I replied, 'Any- 
thing I can do for you, doctor, I will do with great pleasure ! ' 
At his request, I was seated by his side. Three or four other 
persons were in the room. He began : * You know how I have 



!02 THE DYING. 

lived, and how I have talked to you and to others.' ' Yes,' I replied, 
and expressed the opinion that he had not talked as he really 
believed. He responded, 'That is true ; I have always believed 
that Jesus was the Saviour of the world, and that the Bible was 
the word of God ! ' After expressing great sorrow for his 
manner of life, he requested me to conduct the funeral services, 
charging me especially to tell the people that he died in the 
hope of Jesus, and in a firm belief in the word of God, and 
desired me to counteract as far as possible his influence 
while playing the part of an infidel. Fifteen hundred persons 
attended his funeral, and all within the sound of my voice will 
remember my statement of his confession and profession." 

— Editor. 
DYING CHILDREN AND YOUTH. 

It is remarkable how early in life the human mind may be 
impressed with the solemnity of death and the realities of the 
future world. To a child nothing is more interesting than dear 
" mother stories " of God and heaven. Even a boy, up to twelve 
years of age, has been known to give tireless auditory to narra- 
tions respecting death and the great beyond. Very often, too, 
children will carry on their part in a decidedly interesting con- 
versation upon these topics, asking questions beyond their 
years, and giving critical attention to all replies. This particular 
impressibility of the mind of a child argues strongly in support 
of an innate consciousness of immortality. 

Deeply interesting is the study of the death-scenes of chil- 
dren. Many stricken households could furnish facts respecting 
the departure of precious little ones, quite equal to some that 
have had wide currency. How the memory cherishes the great 
child-words that fell from their dying lips ! In the death of his 
only son, Richter received a blow to his health and spirits from 
which he never rallied. We are not surprised, therefore, to find 
among his pathetic utterances the story of a pale, delicate child, 
complaining that the dew-drops were not permitted to tarry 
through the day. "The sun," said the child, "has chased them 
away with his heat, or swallowed them in his wrath." Soon 
after came rain and a rainbow ; and the father pointed the child 




Suffer the little children to come unto Me." 



J. H. POTTS. jq^ 

upwards, saying, " See, there stand thy dew drops, gloriously 
reset, a glittering jewelry in the heavens. Learn, my child, that 
what withers on earth, blooms again in heaven." The father 
knew not that he spoke prefiguring words, but soon after the 
delicate child, with the morning brightness of his earthly wis- 
dom, " was exhaled, like a dew-drop, into heaven." 

The comprehensive view of life, and life's associations, which 
many children have, is beautifully and touchingly illustrated in 
the sad story of little Benny Hawkins, nine years old, who died 
of hydrophobia in his father's home in Chicago. A Western 
newspaper says that he was playing with some companions in 
his father's yard, when a large Newfoundland bounded in, and 
jumped up on Benny's shoulders. He tried to push it off with 
his hand, and by chance struck it in the mouth. He had cut 
his fingers the day before, and it is supposed the saliva of the 
dog touched the wound. In the afternoon of the same day he 
was sent out for some water, but went back crying, " Mamma, I 
can't get the water. I can't see it. It hurts me." He com- 
plained of ear-ache and of being tired. He was put to bed, when 
he soon became very nervous and restless. The next day de- 
veloped unmistakable symptoms of hydrophobia. He begged 
his father and mother to go away from him, saying that he was 
afraid he would bite them. The least sound threw him into a 
paroxysm, and he would get up and run out of the room, cry- 
ing out that that awful dog was after him. " Water hurts me," 
he moaned continually. Dr. Hall was called, and after his first 
visit he brought in consultation five other physicians, but their 
united skill was of no avail. Sunday evening the poor little lad 
asked his father to come to his side. " Sit down, papa," he said, 
" I'm going to die pretty soon, and^I shan't ever see the big 
bright sun, or the green grass, or play with the other boys any 
more. I know I've been a naughty boy, sometimes, papa, but 
please forgive Benny, won't you, and pray to the dear Jesus to 
take care of your little son." As the heart-broken father knelt by 
the bedside, the tiny hands folded in supplication, the tired, worn 
features took on the expression that angels wear, and Benny 
passed the portal of suffering. 
13 



I9 4 THE DYING. 

The grasp of the mind of childhood upon the great truths of 
religion is frequently felt most perceptibly when the little suf- 
ferers are near their end. When a boy we heard the narration 
of a three or four year old daughter of good parents living in the 
Southern country. She sickened, and medical skill proved un- 
availing to restore her. The tiny creature suspected the truth 
herself, and asked her father if the doctor had not said she must 
die. Being answered affirmatively, she was silent for a moment, 
and then said : " Papa, the grave is dark ; oh, it is so dark ! won't 
you go down with me into it? " The stricken parent explained 
the impossibility, whereupon she said : " Papa, let mamma go 
with me, then." All who stood around the little creature were 
in tears, and she began in her own simple way to pray to God. 
Before expiring her face brightened as she said : " Pa, the grave 
is not dark now. I know that you and mamma can't go with 
me, but Jesus will go with me into the grave." 

"I went once," says Rev. C. H. Fowler, D. D., "to see a 
dying girl whom the world had roughly treated. She never had 
a father, she never knew her mother. Her home had been the 
poor-house, her couch a hospital-cot, and yet, as she had stag- 
gered in her weakness there, she had picked up a little of the 
alphabet, enough to spell out the New Testament, and she had 
touched the hem of the Master's garment, and had learned the 
new song. And I never trembled in the presence of such majesty 
as I did in the majesty of her presence as she came near the 
crossing. ' Oh, sir ! ' she said, ' God sends his angels. I have 
read in his word: "Are they not ministering spirits, sent forth to 
minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation ? " And when 
I am leaning in my cot, they stand about me on this floor ; and 
when the heavy darkness comes, and this poor side aches s? 
severely, he comes, for he says, <l Lo, I am with you," and lt^ 
slips his soft hand under my aching side, and I sleep, I rest.' " 

The instances of heavenly ministries at the bedside of dying 
children are not rare. " Good-bye, papa ; good-bye, mamma," 
said a sweet eight-year old, dying in Baltimore, " the angels 
have come to carry me to heaven! " and, sure enough, in a few 
moments the heavenly convoy were bearing his freed spirit up- 
wards to the skies. 



y. H. POTTS. ig$ 

A contributor to the National Era, who was an eye-witness 
to the scene, narrates how a little girl — a lovely and intelligent 
child — who had lost her mother too early to fix the loved 
features in remembrance, began to fade away early. As she re- 
clined on the lap of the friend who took a mother's care of her, 
she would throw her wasted arm around her neck and say, 
" Now tell me about mamma." And when the oft-told story 
had been repeated, she would ask, softly, " Take me into the 
parlor; I want to see my mamma." The request was never re- 
fused, and the affectionate sick child would lie for hours gazing 
on her mother's portrait. But the hour came at last, and weep- 
ing neighbors assembled to see the little child die. " Do you 
know me, darling? " sobbed close to her ear the voice that was 
dearest ; but it awoke no answer. All at once a brightness, as 
if flashed from the throne, beamed upon the colorless face. The 
eyelids opened and the lips parted : the little hands were waved 
upwards, as, in the last impulsive effort, she looked piercingly 
into the far above. "Mother! " she cried, with surprise and 
transport in her tone — and passed with that breath to her 
mother's bosom. Said a distinguished divine, who witnessed 
the scene : " If I had never believed in the ministration of de- 
parted ones before, I could not doubt it now." 

Bearing upon the same point is the story which history brings 
of the little son of Maria Antoinette, nine years of age, who was 
fastened in a cell, and his " food thrust through a hole in the 
upper part of the door. Brought out after a year's confinement, 
during which period that door never once opened, he was 
brought out to die. ' O,' said he, ' the music, the music, how 
fine ! ' ' Where ? ' ' Why, up there, up there ! ' And again he 
repeated the exclamation, 'O the music, how fine! I wish my 
sister could hear it ! ' ' Music ? Where ? ' again asked his 
attendants. ' Up there, up there ! ' said the dying dauphin. ' O 
how fine ! I hear my mothers voice among them.' And, with 
these words, he went to join her, whom at that time he did not 
know to be dead! " — Editor. 



igS THE DYING. 

DYING BELIEVERS. 

If Christianity were of no other service to humanity than to 
light up the pathway to the tomb it would be of inestimable 
value. The terror, despair, or insensibility of infidelity in the 
hour of death has often been remarked, while the complacency, 
hope, and joyous rapture of religion in that " dreadful season" 
is a matter of common observation. It is worthy of note that 
religious persons, when dying, never base their prospects or 
gladness upon their own works or deservings. " I have not 
time to add more," says Cowper, the poet, in a letter, " except 
just to say that if I am ever enabled to look forward to death 
with comfort, which, I thank God, is sometimes the case with 
me, I do not take my view of it from the top of my own works 
and deservings ; though God is witness that the labor of my 
life is to keep a conscience void of offense toward him. 
Death is always formidable to me, but when I see him dis- 
armed of his sting by having sheathed it in the body of Jesus 
Christ." 

In the same spirit were the utterances of the great missionary- 
secretary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Dr. R. L. Dashiel. 
He had undergone a critical surgical operation for a malady 
that proved fatal. In the exclusion from friends which followed, 
and while he was waiting the arrival of the messenger bidding 
him to rest from his arduous labors in the Paradise of God, he 
seemed to be in the closest communion with his heavenly Father. 
One experience he gave as the awakening from a dream. " In 
the dream he thought he had come down to the cold, dark river, 
and was looking for some means to cross it. The flood was 
rolling on, but there was no ferryman ; not even a boat tied to 
the shore. He looked for a plank, but not one could be found; 
as he said, ' Not a chip as large as my finger-nail' He was in 
despair for a moment, but looked off, and there was Jesus, who, 
answering to his cry, bridged the river, and he walked joyfully 
across. So he was wont to say, ' I sometimes think of my life, 
that I consecrated to Christ at the early age of fifteen years ; but 
I find no hope there. I then think of my arduous labors ; but 
there is no hope there. I then count over the number of souls 



y R. POTTS. lg7 

I have led to Christ ; but even this does not help me. But when 
I settle down upon the atonement, I feel safe.' " 

But Christians are not forgetful of duty amid the holy triumph 
of the closing scene. Reconciled to their lot, and exultant even 
in agony, they are yet thoughtful of what properly belongs to 
the termination of the earthly career. Property interests, if not 
previously adjusted, are calmly disposed of; mortuary directions 
are given ; friends are bidden adieu, and all mundane affairs re- 
ceive final attention. Then, as if cut loose for its flight, the 
soul begins to spread its wings. A beautiful illustration of this 
order of mind in the last moments of life is found in the case 
of Dr. J. R. Goodwin, a prominent Christian layman of Illinois, 
who was shot, in the very noon of life, by an insane brother. 
Calling his son to his side, he said : " You know how much I 
am attached to Asbury University. I have intended to give to it 
$10,000. Will you see that my wishes are carried out ? " When 
the son assured him that he would, he quietly said : " Now all is 
done, and I am ready." And then he said, with a joyful look: 
" The cross ! the cross ! what would I do but for the cross ! Oh, 
how sweet to lean on the cross of Christ ! Nothing but the 
religion of Jesus Christ could comfort me so in such an hour ! " 
He expressed a desire to see the brother that wounded him, and 
said he loved him, and freely forgave him, and then with joyful 
exclamations passed triumphantly home. 

Nor does the good man's trust depart or wane as he nears 
the final moment. The faith, cherished in life, proves the stay in 
death. Religion would not be the comfort that it is if it failed in 
the time when most needed. Infidels have been known volun- 
tarily to retract, and even to sue for mercy, in the face of disso- 
lution. Not so with the followers of Christ : 

" Faith sees the bright, eternal doors 
Unfold to make his children way." 

When this writer stood by his own father in death, the thought 
occurred to solicit an expression of trust, in reference to the 
future, from one who had long professed the faith, and had also 
ministered to others in holy things. O how assuring and pre- 



198 



THE DYING. 



cious was the positive declaration which came promptly from 
the lips of the dying sufferer : " I have full confidence in the 
soul's immortality." Among the last words of the great and 
good Dr. Jeremiah B. Jeter, whose loss not Baptists alone have 
deplored, were these: "Conversing with one of his most loved 
and trusted friends, in response to the question, ' Well, doctor, 
what do you think of the future life ? ' he replied : ' In regard to 
many questions my opinions are not so fixed as when I was a 
young man ; but of my trust in the Lord and his ability to save 
me I have no doubts.' " 

In that interesting book, " The Night Lamp," written by the 
Rev. Dr. Macfarlane, there is an account of the death of his 
mother. At the last moment of her life " her features, but now 
pale and languid, assumed an unearthly beauty. Her eye, but 
now dull and heavy, was lighted up as from some invisible glory. 
Her voice, but now scarcely audible, took on strength and dis- 
tinctness of tone. . . . ' What do I see ? ' she exclaimed, ' 1 
what do I see ? ' They looked upward, as she did, but they saw 
nothing. ' Wings ! wings ! wings ! ' she added, with a most 
heavenly expression in every feature. They that were of the 
earth dared not yet speak. ' Fly ! fly ! fly ! ' said the expiring 
conqueror : ' O ! why is his chariot so long in coming ? why 
tarry the wheels of his chariot ?' ' Do you mean angels, Grace ? 
Do you see them ? ' inquired Dr. Husband (her father). ' Yes,' 
she replied ; ' angels to conduct me safely home ! ' Having 
thus spoken, she was not: for the Lord took her." 

But the Christian's victory over death does not always take 
the form of triumphant exultation. The late Dr. T. E. Bond, 
when dying, asked of one who stood near : " What is the victory 
over death ? " and to the answer given, he in a moment added 
his own, speaking slowly, and with an intense gaze, which gave 
peculiar emphasis to his words : " Is it not the victory ever the 
dread of death ? Is it not the victory of patience under the 
sufferings which precede death ? Is it not the victory of resig- 
nation in the prospect of death? Is it not the victory of faith, 
which looks beyond death and trusts all to Christ ? Is it not 
also the victory over the anxieties and cares of the worldj and 



DYING TESTIMONIES. \ 99 

the life which is left behind ? This victory is won now in Christ 
Jesus, who is able to make us conquerors, through his love. I 
have no cares and anxieties now ; I have laid them upon him. 
The fear of the physical pain of death is all that remains to 
be conquered. That fear still exists, but I think very little 
about it." 

As evidence that this victory is the portion of dying believers, 
we have carefully collated, from many sources, the following 
dying testimonies. The list might have been indefinitely ex- 
tended, but a sufficient number are presented to show how, in 
all countries, and under all circumstances, since the days ol 
Christ on earth, Christians, when dying, have exulted in the 
presence and smile of God : 

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. — Simeon. 

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. — St. Stephen. 

This soul in flames I offer, Christ, to thee. — Jerome of Prague. 

I take God to witness, I preached none but his own pure doc- 
trines, and what I taught I am ready to seal with my blood.— 
Jolin Huss. 

Be of good cheer, Brother Ridley, for we shall this day light 
such a candle in England as will, I trust, by God's grace, never 
be put out. — Bishop Latimer, who was burned with Bishop Rid- 
ley at the stake. 

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. — Archbishop Cranmer, in the 
flames. 

Be of good comfort, brother, for we shall have a happy supper 
with the Lord this night. — John Bradford, an English martyr. 

This day let me see the Lord Jesus. — Archbishop Jewell, of 
England. 

God be praised for everything— -Chrysostom. 

I have not so lived among you as to be ashamed to live yet 
longer; but neither do I fear death, for we have a good Lord. — 
Ambrose of Milan. 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy 
Ghost. — Bede the Venerable. 

Into thy hands do I commend my spirit, for thou hast re- 
deemed me, O Lord. — Ansgar of Scandinavia. 



200 THE &yiNG. 

Lord, I will go into thine house, I will offer my prayer in 
thine holy temple, and will glorify thy name. — King Louis IX. 
of France. 

1 know none now save Christ the crucified. — John Wessel, the 
Dutch reformer. 

My Lord died for my sins; shall not I gladly give this poor 
life for him? — Jerome Savonarola, an Italian reformer and 
martyr. 

They can slay only the body, not the soul. — Zwingle of Zurich , 
dying in battle under the thrusts of lances. 

My friend, thou injurest me not. By thy deed I am delivered 
from a sore imprisonment. — Antony Laborie, of France, to his 
executioner. 

The covenants, the covenants shall yet be Scotland's reviving. 
■ — James Guthrie, a Scottish martyr. 

I am going from weeping friends to congratulate angels and 
rejoicing saints in heaven. — Risden Darracott. 

Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth. I will die 
steadfast, clinging to Christ and to the doctrine I have so con- 
stantly preached. — Martin Luther. 

Nothing but heaven. — Philip Melancthon. 

Now it is come. — John Knox. 

Lord, thou bruisest me, but it is enough for me to know that 
it is thou. — John Calvin. 

It is our joy that our names are written in the book of life. — 
John Valentine Andrea, a German author and clergyman. 

I have summoned you that you may see with what tranquillity 
a Christian can die. — Joseph Addison, to his son-in-law. 

Light breaks in ! Halleluiah ! — Blumhardt. 

Tell those that are drawing down to the bed of death, from 
my experience, that it has no terrors; that in the hour when it 
is most wanted, there is mercy with the Most High, and that 
some change takes place which fits the soul to meet its God. — 
Sir William Forbes. 

What glory! the angels are waiting for me. — Dr. Bateman, a 
distinguished physician. 

I can now contemplate clearly the grand scene to which I am 
going. — Dr. McLain. 



DYING TESTIMONIES. 2 OI 

I have nothing to plead except my Jesus. I commend me to 
my faithful Creator, my well-known Redeemer, my tried Com- 
forter, and desire nothing save to be justified in his presence. — 
JoJin Albert Bengel, author of" Bengel's Gnomen." 

And now I leave off to speak any more with creatures, and 
begin my intercourse with God, which shall never be broken off 
Farewell, father and mother, friends and relations! Farewell 
the world and all delights ! Farewell sun, moon and stars ! 
Welcome God and Father ! Welcome sweet Jesus Christ, the 
Mediator of the New Covenant ! Welcome blessed Spirit of 
grace, the God of all consolation! Welcome glory! Welcome 
eternal life ! and welcome death ! O Lord, into thine hand I 
commit my spirit. Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of 
truth. — Hugh MacKail, a Scottish martyr. 

I have pain; there is no arguing against sense; but I have 
peace, I have peace. — Richard Baxter. 

From the chair to the throne. — Dr. Wilbur Fisk, when lifted 
from his bed into a chair to die. 

I am going, going, going to glory! Farewell sin, farewell 
death ! — Robert Newton. 

We shall see strange sights to-day; not different, however, 
from what we might realize by faith; but it is not the glitter and 
glare, not the topaz and diamond ; no, it is God I want to see ; 
he is all and in all. — Richard Watson, author of " Watson's 
Theological Institutes." 

You have been used to take notice of the sayings of dying 
men : this is mine — That a life spent in the service of God, and 
communion with him, is the most comfortable and pleasant life 
that any one can live in the present world. — Matthew Henry, 
the commentator. 

The conflict is over. Precious salvation. — James Hervey. 

Thy creatures, O Lord, have been my books, but thy Holy 
Scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields 
and gardens; but I have found thee, O God, in thy sanctuary, 
thy temples. — Lord Bacon. 

Welcome cross of Christ; welcome everlasting life. — Law- 
rence Saunders. 



202 



THE DYING. 



O that glorious sun. — Bishop Porteus, of England. 
Trust in God, and ye need not fear. — President Jonathan 
Edwards. 

O let me be gone, I long to be at home. — Samuel Spring, D. D. 

the face of God ! Glory, wonderful glory ! — Jeremiah Evarts. 
The conflict is over and past. I begin to feel an unspeakable 

fulness of love and peace divine. Lay my head upon my pillow, 
and be still. — Philip William Otierbein. 

Let a thousand fall before Africa be given up. — Rev. Melville 
B. Cox, first missionary to Africa. 

Tell my friends, that whether for time or for eternity, all is 
well. — Bishop William McKendree. 

Glory to God ! — Bishop Enoch George. 

Amen. — Bishop Emory. 

The future looks bright. — Bishop Thomas A. Morris. 

1 am net disappointed. — Bishop E. L. Janes. 
All right. — Bishop E. R. Ames. 

God is letting me down easily. — Dr. Thomas Sewell. 

I am sweeping through the gates, washed in the blood of the 
Lamb. — Alfred Cookman. 

I feel that my race is nearly run. I have, indeed, tried to do 
my duty. I cannot accuse myself of having neglected any known 
obligation. Yet all this avails me nothing. I place no depend- 
ence upon anything but the righteousness and death of Jesus 
Christ. — President Erancis Wayland. 

One word, one word — Jesus Christ! — President Eliphalet 
Notl. 

Is this dying ? Is this all ? Is this all that I feared when I 
prayed against a hard death ? O, I can bear this ! I can bear 
it ! I can bear it ! — Cotton Mather. 

God's government is infinitely perfect. — Dr. Samuel Stillman. 

I am weary ; I will now go to sleep. Good-night ! — Dr. 
Augustus Neander, the great historian. 

O what triumphant truths ! — President Timothy Dwight, con- 
cerning some passages of Scripture read to him. 

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty ! Halleluia, halleluia ! 
— Rev. Freeborn Garrettson. 



DYING TESTIMONIES. 



203 



how this soul of mine longs to be gone, like a bird out of 
his cage, to the realms of bliss. — John Fletcher. 

1 am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world ; 
yet, when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of 
a boy bounding away from school. Death will never take me 
by surprise ; do not be afraid of that, I feel so strong in Christ. — 
Dr. Adoniram Judson, the great missionary. 

O, my dear Lord, help and keep thy servant. — Mrs. Elizabeth 
Fry. 

I expect eternal life, not as a reward of merit, but as a pure 

act of bounty Through the blood of the Lamb I 

hope for an entire victory over the last enemy ; and that before 
this comes to you, I shall have reached the celestial heights ; 
and while you are reading these lines, I shall be adoring before 
the throne of God, where faith shall be turned into vision, and 
these languishing desires satisfied with the full fruition of an 
immortal love. — Last letter to a friend of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe. 

I shall go to my Father this night. — Countess of Huntingdon, 

Lord, what is it that I see ? O the greatness of the glory 
that is revealed in me ! that is before me. — Lady Elizabeth Hast- 
ings. 

I am drawing near to glory. — Mrs. Fletcher. 

Commend me to the King, and tell him he is constant in his 
course of advancing me. From a private gentlewoman he made 
me a marquisse ; and from a marquisse a queen ; and now he 
hath left no higher degree of earthly honor, he hath made me a 
martyr. — Queen Anne Boleyn, preparing for the scaffold. 

I feel as if I were sitting with Mary at the feet of my Re- 
deemer, hearing the music of his voice, and learning of him to 
be meek and lowly. — Mrs. Felicia D. Hemans. 

Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly — He comes ! He comes ! He 
comes! — Mrs. Freeborn Garrettson. 

I am so happy in Christ ; not only my soul, but the room 
seems filled with his presence and glory. — Mrs. Bishop Morris. 



204 THE D ywG. 

LAST WORDS OF DISTINGUISHED SOLDIERS, CIVILIANS AND 

SOVEREIGNS. 

Head of the army. — Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Cease now ! — John Locke, to one who was reading a psalm. 

Happy. — Sir James Mackintosh. 

Soul, thou hast served Christ these seventy years, and art 
thou afraid to die? Go out, soul, go out. — Hilary, a. d. 385. 

O, I have consumed my days in laborious trifling. — Grotins. 

I am dying, sir, of a hundred good symptoms. — Pope. 

Lord, make an end. — Erasmus. 

Don't let that awkward squad fire over me. — Robert Burns, 
speaking of the militia. 

It is a great consolation to me in my last hour that there is 
not a drop of blood on my hands. — Frederick V., of Denmark. 

My God, my Father and my Friend, 
Do not forsake me in the end. 

— Earl of Roscommon. 

I feel calmer and calmer. — Schiller. 

Tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to anchor. — Lord Nelson. 

I feel better, my friend. I feel the daisies growing over me. — 
Keats. 

And must I die ? Will not all my riches save me ? What, 
is there no bribing death ? — Cardinal Beaufort. 

I shall hear in heaven. — Beethoven, who was deaf. 

All my possessions for a moment of time. — Queen Elizabeth. 

I have loved God, my father and liberty. — Madame de Stael. 

Precious salvation. — Sir J. Stonehouse. 

In me behold the end of the world and all its vanities. — Sir 
Philip Sidney. 

Let me hear once more those notes so long my solace and 
delight. — Mozart. 

Lord, forgive me ; specially my sins of omission. — Arch' 
bishop Usher. 

My days are past as a shadow that returns not. — Hooker. 

1 can think no longer. — Vinei. 

. Open to me, O God, open to me. — Lacordaire. 



DYING TESTIMONIES. 2 0$ 

I must sleep now. — Lord Byron. 

Clasp my hand, my dear friend, I die. — Alfieri. 

I'm shot, if I don't believe I'm dying. — Chancellor Thorlow. 

Let me die to the sounds of delicious music. — Mirabeau. 

God preserve the Emperor. — Hayden. 

I have always desired the happiness of France ; I did all in 
my power to contribute to it ; and I can say with truth to all of 
you now present at my last moments, that the first wife of Na- 
poleon never caused a single tear to flow. — Empress Josephine. 

The artery ceases to beat. — Haller y with his finger on his own 
pulse. 

It is well. — George Washington. 

Independence forever. — John Adams. 

It is the last of earth. — John Q. Adams. 

A dying man can do nothing easy. — Franklin. 

Gentlemen, you will bear witness that I die with the firmness 
becoming a soldier. — Major Andre. 

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country. 
— Captain Nathan Hale. 

I resign my soul- to God, and my daughter to my country. — 
Thomas Jefferson. 

Don't give up the ship. — Commodore Lawrence. 

Who run? the enemy? Then I die contented. — General 
Wolfe. 

It is time I should go. Weep not, mourn not for me. — Josiah 
Quincy. 

I feel now that I am dying ; our care must now be to minimize 
the pain. — Hon. Jeremy Bentham. 

I strike my flag. — Commodore Hull. 



2o6 



THE D YING. 



CHAPTER III.— DEATH-SCENES. 




POISONING OF SOCRATES. 

HE hour of sunset was near, for a good deal of time had 
passed while he was within. When he came out he sat 
down with us again after his bath, but not much was 
said. Soon the jailer, who was the servant of the eleven, 
entered and stood by him, saying, " To you, Socrates, 
whom I know o be the noblest, and gentlest, and best of all 
who ever came to this place, I will not impute the angry feelings 
of other men, who rage and swear at me when, in obedience to 
the authorities, I bid them drink the poison ; indeed, I am sure that 
you will not be angry with me, for others, as you are aware, and 
not I, are the guilty cause. And so fare you well, and try to 
bear lightly what must needs be; you know my errand." Then, 
bursting into tears, he turned away and went out. 

Socrates looked at him and said, " I return your good wishes, 
and will do as you bid." Then, turning to us, he said : " How 
charming the man is ! Since I have been in prison he has 
always been coming to see me, and at times he would talk to 
me, and was as good as he could be to me, and now see how 
generously he sorrows for me ! But we must do as he says. 
Crito, let the cup be brought, if the poison is prepared ; if not, 
let the attendant prepare some." " Yes," said Crito, " the sun 
is still upon the hill-tops, and many a one has taken the draught 
late, and, after the announcement has been made to him, he has 
eaten and drunk and indulged in sensual delights. Do not 
hasten, then ; there is still time." Socrates said, " Yes, Crito, 
and they of whom you speak are right in doing thus, for they 
think that they will gain by the delay ; but I am right in not 
doing thus, for I do not think that I should gain anything by 
drinking the poison a little later. I should be sparing and 



PL A TO. 



20J 



saving a life that is already gone. I could only laugh at myself 
for this. Please, then, to do as I say, and not to refuse me." 

Crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant, and 
the servant went in and remained some time, and then returned 
with the jailer, carrying the cup of poison. Socrates said, " You, 
my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give 
me directions how I am to proceed." The man answered, " You 
have only to walk about till your legs are heavy, and then to lie 
down, and the poison will act." At the same time he handed 
the cup to Socrates, who, in the easiest and gentlest manner, 
without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at 
the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took 
the cup and said, "What do you say about making a libation 
out of this cup to any god? May I, or not?" The man an- 
swered, " We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem 
enough." " I understand," he said, "yet I may and must pray 
to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world. 
May this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me ! " Then, 
holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank 
of the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to con- 
trol our sorrow, but now, when we saw him drinking, and saw, 
too, that he had finished the draught, we would no longer for- 
bear, and, in spite of myself, I own tears were flowing fast; so 
that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was 
not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity 
in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, 
when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up 
and moved away, and I followed ; and at that moment Apollo- 
dofus, who had been weeping all the time, broke into a loud 
cry that made cowards of us all. 

Socrates alone retained his calmness. " What is this strange 
outcry ? " he said ; " I sent away the women mainly in order 
that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a 
man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience." 
When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears ; 
and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and 
then he lay on his back according to the directions ; and the 



20 8 THE DYING. 

man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet 
and legs, and, after a while, he pressed his foot hard, and asked 
him if he could feel, and he said, " No," and then his leg, and so 
upward and upward, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. 
And he felt them himself, and said, " When the poison reaches 
the heart that will be the end." He was beginning to grow cold 
about the groin, when he uncovered his face (for he had cov- 
ered himself up) and said (these were his last words), " Crito, I 
owe a cock to iEsculapius. Will you remember to pay the 
debt?" " The debt shall be paid," said Crito; "is there any- 
thing else ? " There was no answer to this question, but in a 
minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants un- 
covered him. His eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and 
mouth. Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I 
may truly call the wisest, the justest, the best of all the men 
whom I have ever known. — From the Greek of Plato — JowetVs 

translation. 

CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST. 

Soon the procession reached the hill-top, and Christ was laid 
upon the ground, and his arms stretched along the timber he 
had carried, with the palms upturned, and through them spikes 
driven, fastening them to the wood. Methinks I hear the strokes 
of the hammer as it sends the iron, with blow after blow, through 
the quivering tendons, and behold the painful workings of that 
agony-wrung brow, and the convulsive heaving and swelling 
of that blessed bosom, which seemed striving to rend above the 
imprisoned heart. 

At length he is lifted from the ground — his weight dragging 
on the spikes through his hands ; and the cross-piece inserted 
into the mortice of the upright timber, and a heavy iron crushed 
through his feet, fastening them to the main post, and he is left 
to die. Why speak of his agony — of his words of comfort to 
the dying thief — of the multitude around him, or of the disgrace 
of that death ! Not even to look on that pallid face and flowing 
blood could one get any conception of the suffering of the vic- 
tim. The gloom and terror that began to gather round the soul, 
as every aid, human and divine, withdrew itself, and it stood 



y. T. HEAD LEY. 2 Og 

alone in the deserted, darkened universe, and shuddered, were 
all unseen by mortal eye. Yet even in this dreadful hour his 
benevolent heart did not forget its friends. Looking down from 
the cross, he saw the mother that bore him gazing in tears upon 
his face, and with a feeble and tremulous voice he turned to 
John, who had so often lain in his bosom, and said, " Son, 
behold thy mother." Then turning to his mother, he said, 
" Behold thy Son." 

His business with earthly things was now over, and he sum- 
moned his energies to meet the last most terrible blow, before 
which nature itself was to give way. He had hitherto endured 
all without a complaint — the mocking, the spitting upon, the 
cross, the nails and the agony — but now came a woe that broke 
his heart. His Father's — his own Father 's frown began to darken 
upon him. Oh, who can tell the anguish of that loving, trust- 
ing, abandoned heart at the sight ! It was too much, and there 
arose a cry so piercing and shrill and wild that the universe 
shivered before it ; and as the accents, "My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me ? " fell on the ears of astonished mortals, 
and filled heaven with alarm, the earth gave a groan, as if she 
too was about to expire ; the sun died in the heavens ; an earth- 
quake thundered on to complete the dismay ; and the dead could 
no longer sleep, but burst their ghastly cerements, and came 
forth to look upon the scene. That was the gloomiest wave 
that ever broke over the soul of the Saviour, and he fell before 
it. Christ was dead: and, to all human appearance, the world 
was an orphan 

Now all was sad, dark and despairing around Mount Calvary. 
The excitement which the slow murder had created, vanished. 
With none to resist, and none to be slain, a change came over 
the feelings of the multitude, and they began one by one to 
return to the city. The sudden darkness also that wrapped the 
heavens, and the throb of the earthquake, which made those 
three crosses reel to and fro like cedars in a tempest, had cov- 
ered their feelings, and all but the soldiery were glad to be away 
from a scene that had ended with such supernatural exhibitions. 
Gradually the noise and confusion around the cross receded 
14 



2IO THE DYING. 

down the slopes — the shades of evening began to creep over the 
landscape, throwing into still more ghastly relief those three 
white corpses stretched on high and streaked with blood — and 
all was over. No ! not over, for the sepulchre was yet to open, 
and the slain Christ was yet to mount the heavens in his glori- 
ous ascension. — J. T. Headley. 

THE PHYSICAL CAUSE OF CHRIST'S DEATH. 

That any one should die so soon on the cross, especially one 
like Jesus, in the prime of life and unweakened by previous ill- 
health, and in such vigor to the last as to utter such a shriek as 
that with which he expired, appeared even to Christian antiquity 
to imply some supernatural cause. But the mingled flow of 
blood and water seems to point unmistakably to another ex- 
planation. The immediate cause of death appears, beyond ques- 
tion, to have been the rupture of his heart, brought about by 
mental agony. Excess of joy or grief is known to induce the 
bursting of some division of the heart, and the consequent flow 
of blood into the pericardium, or bag, filled with colorless serum, 
like water, in which the heart is suspended. In ordinary cases, 
only examination after death discovers the fact, but in that of 
our Lord the same end was answered by the thrust of the sol- 
dier's spear. In a death from heart rupture, " the hand is sud- 
denly carried to the front of the chest, and a piercing shriek 
uttered." The hands of Jesus were nailed to the cross, but the 
appalling shriek is recorded. Jesus died, literally, of a broken 
heart! — Cunningham Geikie, D. D. 

ANOTHER VIEW. 

The suddenness of Christ's death is offered as a reason for 
supposing the rupture of the heart. But the intensity of his 
previous sufferings in the garden will account sufficiently for the 
sudden dissolution of the body of Jesus under the agony of the 
crucifixion ; and that other more important fact, that he was 
active, and not passive, in the matter. This we learn from his 
own words, John x. 17, 18: "Therefore doth my Father love 
me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No 



CURRAN— BLAIR. 



211 



man taketh it from me; but I lay it down of myself." At the 
point where his sufferings were complete, when he had drank 
the cup to the dregs, he yielded up the ghost, uttering the ever- 
memorable words, " It is finished." . . . The degree of his 
sufferings before he was crucified may be inferred from his 
agonizing plaints in the garden: " My soul is exceeding sorrow- 
ful, even nnto death" Matt. xxv. 38. The separation of that 
pure and immaculate soul from that perfect body was surely 
effected under the joint influence of mental and physical suffer- 
ings ; the sorrows of the soul and torture of the body. That 
body was perfect, and remained perfect, in all its organs and 
parts. It was no further broken than was effected by the nails, 
the thorns and the spear, which only separated the living tis- 
sues, but did not destroy them ; no part could be subjected to 
disintegration or corruption. It was predicted that his body 
should be pierced, and this was done, and no more ; the surren- 
der of life was, nevertheless, a voluntary act 

His death could not have been accidental, and at the same 
time by special appointment. He accomplished death ; death had 
no necessary power over him, neither was it necessary to call in 
some of the accidental agencies of dissolution to assist in accom- 
plishing death. He is the conqueror of death, but humbled 
himself to the condition of the dead for an end ; and then by 
his own act resumed his life, tarried on earth a few days, to 
make the proof of his resurrection sure, then assumed immor- 
tality for his humanity, and carried it with him to heaven : not 
a fibre lost, nor a mark effaced that is necessary to make his 
person perfect, or the atonement complete. — Robert Curran, M. D. 

NEVER MAN DIED LIKE THIS MAN. 

By wonders in heaven, and wonders on earth, was the hour 
of Christ's death distinguished. All nature seemed to feel it; 
and the dead and the living bore witness of its importance. The 
veil of the temple was rent in twain. The earth shook. There 
was darkness over all the land. The graves were opened, and 
many who slept arose, and went into the holy city. Nor were 
these the only prodigies of this awful hour. The most hardened 



212 THE DYING. 

hearts were subdued and changed. The judge who, in order 
to gratify the multitude, passed sentence against him, publicly 
attested his innocence. The Roman centurion who presided 
at the crucifixion glorified God, and acknowledged the sufferer 
to be more than man. After he saw the things which had 
passed, he said : " Certainly this was a righteous person ;" " truly 
this was the Son of God." The Jewish malefactor who was 
crucified with him addressed him as a King, and implored his 
favor. Even the crowd of insensible spectators, who had come 
forth as to a common spectacle, and who began with clamors 
and insults, returned home smiting their breasts. Look back on 
the heroes, the philosophers, the legislators of old. View them, 
in their last moments. Recall every circumstance which dis- 
tinguished their departure from this world. Where can you find 
such an assemblage of high virtues, and of great events, as con- 
curred at the death of Christ? Where so many testimonies 
given to the dignity of the dying person, by earth and by 
heaven ? — Hugh Blair. 

THE FATE OF THE APOSTLES. 

All the apostles were assaulted by the enemies of their Master. 
They were called to seal their doctrines with their blood, and 
nobly did they bear the trial. Schumacher says : 

St. Matthew suffered martyrdom by being slain with a sword 
at a distant city of Ethiopia. 

St. Mark expired at Alexandria, after having been cruelly 
dragged through the streets of that city. 

St. Luke was hanged upon an olive tree in the classic land 
of Greece. 

St. John was put in a cauldron of boiling oil, but escaped 
death in a miraculous manner, and was afterwards banished to 
Patmos. 

St. Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downward. 

St. James the Greater was beheaded at Jerusalem. 

St. James the Less was thrown from a lofty pinnacle of the 
temple, and then beaten to death with a fuller's club. 

St. Bartholomew was flayed alive. 




St. Sebastien. 



From the painting by Guido Rent. 



SOPHOCLES. 



213 



St. Andrew was bound to a cross, whence he preached to his 
persecutors until he died. 

St. Thomas was run through the body with a lance at Coro* 
mandel, in the East Indies. 

St. Jude was shot to death with arrows. 

St. Matthias was first stoned and then beheaded. 

St. Barnabas, of the Gentiles, was stoned to death by the 
Jews at Salonica. 

St. Paul, after various tortures and persecutions, was at length 
beheaded at Rome by the Emperor Nero. 

Such was the fate of the apostles, according to traditional 
statements; and though we cannot authenticate them all, we 
at least know that the hatred of the world to these men and 
their teachings was sufficient to render the accounts not very 
improbable. 

From hence the lesson learn ye 

To reckon no man happy till ye witness 

The closing day ; until he pass the border 

Which severs life from death, unscathed by sorrow. — Sophocles. 



NERO AND THE CHRISTIAN MARTYRS. 

Mythology was ransacked for bloody subjects to put on an 
awful stage. The pictures and statues were turned into ghastly 
tableaux vivants amid the yellings and applause of a brutalized 
public. Now it was Hercules burned in his Nessus shirt on 
Mount CEta, or Orpheus or Daedalus devoured by beasts, while 
the god Mercury stepped lightly through the gorged arena 
and touched each body with his red-hot wand, to see if it still 
moved, or Pluto stalked forth to dispatch those yet alive with 
his mace, and drag them by the feet to his infernal kingdom. 
The most licentious myths of the old religions, as well as the 
crudest legends, were freely exhausted, and thus by a grim, but 
unconscious, irony the Christian martyrs supplied, as represen- 
tatives of the new religion, the ghastly apotheosis of the old. 
Meanwhile Nero, dressed up as a beast in a leopard's skin, com- 
mitted in person the foulest excesses on the public stage. But 
the most novel part of this festivity was reserved for the even- 



214 



THE DYING. 



ings. Then might the whole of the population be seen pouring 
toward the. spot now known as the square in front of St. Peter's 
at Rome. There, beyond the Tiber, was Nero's favorite circus. 
The illuminations were brilliant. The usual lamps and torches 
were varied by a new device worthy of Tiegellinus. Living 
men and women were immersed in barrels of oil or thickly 
covered with resinous materials and set on fire, until the crowded 
avenues reeked with the fumes of unguents and pitch, amid the 
glare of this unparalleled holocaust. Had the early Christians, 
had the writers of the New Testament no cause for hating a 
world that revelled in such spectacles as this ? Could they do 
otherwise than wait in hope and patience for the " Lord " who 
should consume " that Wicked with the spirit of his mouth, and 
destroy him with the brightness of his coming ? " Yet were 
these scenes graced by tender and sublime episodes, bursting 
like flowers of immortal beauty and fragrance from the bloody 
and calcined soil of martyrdom. The pale, sweet Blandina, 
crucified but happy, and making happy with the memories of 
Cnrist ; Potamiena and Felicity melting the brutal crowd by their 
quiet sweetness and modesty ; Perpetua arranging her hair care- 
fully as she goes to be torn by beasts, " because it is not right 
that a martyr should appear with her hair in disorder, as though 
what was really her glory should appear to be grief to her.'' 
One simple girl so touched by her sweet patience and beauty 
a young Roman that he openly pitied her. Seeing this she 
was moved, and gave him the handkerchief that was on her 
bosom. Overpowered with enthusiasm, he followed her into 
the arena, and shared her fate. Thus death seemed more lovely 
than life, and the love that could suffer proved stronger than 
the hate that could kill the body. — Good Words. 

BURNING OF POLYCARP. 

Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and the last of those who had 
been taught by the apostles, was one of the earliest victims of 
primitive persecution. He might have escaped at the time of 
his arrest, and was urged to do so, but refused. After feeding 
the soldiers who came to seize him, he quietly and calmly 



PO TTS— WITHR W. 



215 



delivered himself into their hands. He asked only for one hour 
in which to pray, but continued two hours in rapt devotion, so 
that the heathen were greatly moved by it. 

Seated on an ass, the bishop was conveyed to the city. The 
chief of police met him, took him up in his carriage, and said in 
a friendly way : " What harm can there be in saying : ' The 
Emperor, our Lord ! ' and in sacrificing ? " Polycarp at first was 
silent, but when they urged him, he quietly answered, " I shall 
not do as you advise." Becoming enraged they thrust him vio- 
lently out of the carriage, injuring one of his legs. He did not 
complain, but went cheerfully before the Proconsul, seated in the 
circus, and surrounded by an immense multitude who had been 
attracted by the news that Polycarp was in custody. 

The Proconsul, struck with his great age, urged him to regard 
it, to swear by the fortunes of Caesar, to join in the cry, "Away 
with the Atheists ! " meaning the Christians. Polycarp looked 
upon the crowd, raised his eyes to heaven, and said, "Away with 
the Atheists ! " Then he was urged to swear by the emperor 
and renounce Christ. The venerable bishop answered : " Eighty 
and six years have I served him, and he hath never wronged me : 
and how can I blaspheme my God and King who hath saved 
me?" "I have wild beasts," said the Proconsul, "and will 
expose you to them unless you repent." " Call them," answered 
Polycarp. "I will lame your spirit by fire!" hissed through the 
teeth of the excited and enraged officer. " You threaten me," 
calmly replied the martyr, " with the fire which burns only for a 
moment, but are yourself ignorant of the fire of eternal punish- 
ment reserved for the ungodly." He was then condemned to 
the flames. With the fire surging around him, he sung praises 
to God, and as the red, hot tongues licked up his breath, he 
blessed God that he was counted worthy to receive his portion 
in the number of the martyrs — in the cup of Christ. — Editor. 

PERPETUA EXPOSED TO ENRAGED BEASTS. 

No more pathetic episode is contained in the whole range of 
Martyrology than that of the youthful mother, Perpetua, who 
suffered at Carthage under Severus. Few can read unmoved 



2i6 THE DYING. 

the acts of her martyrdom. Young — she was only twenty-two 
— beautiful, of noble family, and dearly loved, her heathen 
father entreated her to pity his gray hairs, her mother's tears, 
her helpless babe. But her faith proved triumphant over even 
the yearnings of natural affection ; and wan and faint from 
recent child-birth pangs, she was led with Felicitas, her com- 
panion, into the crowded amphitheatre, and exposed to the cruel 
horns of infuriate beasts. Amid the agonies of death, more 
conscious of her wounded modesty than of her pain, with a 
gesture of dignity she drew her disheveled robe about her 
person. She seemed rapt in ecstasy till by a merciful stroke of 
the gladiator she was released from her sufferings, and ex- 
changed the blood and dust of the arena, and the shouts of the 
ribald mob, for the songs of the redeemed, and the beatific 
vision of the Lord she loved. — Withrovus Catacombs of Rome. 

Cease from your weeping, maidens. Over those for whom the 
night of death as blessing comes, we may not mourn. 

Sophocles. 
PERSECUTORS IN DEATH. 

In the violent deaths or loathsome diseases of many of their 
persecutors, the Christians recognized the retributive judgments 
of the Almighty. Nero died ignominiously by his own hand. 
Domitian was assassinated. During the reign of Aurelius, war, 
famine, and pestilence wasted the land. Decius perished miserably 
in a marsh, and his body became the prey of the prowling jackal 
and unclean buzzard. Valerian, captured by the Persians, after 
having served as a footstool to his haughty foe, is said to have 
been flayed alive, and his skin stuffed with straw. Aurelian was 
slain by the hand of a trusted servant, and Carinus by the 
dagger of a husband whom he had irreparably wronged. Dio- 
cletian, having languished for years the prey of painful maladies, 
which even affected his reason, it is said committed suicide. 
Galerius, like those rivals in bloodshed and persecution, Herod 
and Philip II., became an object of loathing and abhorrence, 
being eaten of worms while yet alive. Maximian fell by the 
hand of the public executioner ; and Maxentius in the 




Lady Jane Grey Going To Execution. 



WITHR O W— O WEN—PUNSHON. 2 1 J 

hour of defeat, was smothered in the ooze of the Tiber be- 
neath the walls of his capital. Severus opened his own veins 
and bled to death. The first Maximin was murdered ; the 
second, a fugitive and an exile, committed suicide by poison. 
Licinius, the last of the persecutors, was slain by his ferocious 
soldiery, and his name, by a decree of the senate, forever branded 
with infamy. Thus with indignities and tortures, often sur- 
passing those they inflicted on their Christian subjects, perished 
the enemies of the Church of God, as if pursued by a divine 
retribution no less inexorable than the avenging Nemesis of the 
Pagan mythology. — W. H. Withrow, M. A. 

LADY JANE GREY. 

(Born 1537— died 1554.) 

Holding a book in her hand, from which she occasionally 
prayed, she ascended, with a firm step, the scaffold. From the 
platform she addressed a few words to those around, expressive 
of her resignation. She then commended herself to God. When 
the executioner would have assisted to disrobe her, she motioned 
him aside, and turned to her attendants, who, with many sobs, 
bared her beautiful throat. As they did so she said: "I pray 
you, dispatch me quickly; " and, kneeling, inquired, " Will you 
take it off before I lay me down?" " No, madam," was the 
answer. Then tying the handkerchief over her eyes, and feeling 
for the block, she said : " Where is it ? " One of the bystanders 
guided her thereto ; and laying down her head, she resigned 
meekly, as she had fulfilled, her forfeited existence. — A. Owen. 

SLAUGHTER OF THE HUGUENOTS. 

For the honor of humanity let us pass rapidly over the mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew — that premeditated and most infamous 
atrocity. On the 24th of August, 1572, at the noon of night — 
fit time for deeds of blood — the queen mother and her two 
guilty sons were shivering in all the timidness of cruelty in the 
royal chamber. They maintained a sullen silence, for conscience 
had made cowards of them all. As they looked out uneasily 
into tfie oppressed and solitary night, a pistol-shot was heard. 



2I 8 THE DYING. 

Remorse seized upon the irresolute monarch, and he issued 
orders to arrest the tragedy. It was too late, for the royal tigress 
at his side, anticipating that his purpose might waver, had 
already commanded the signal, and even as they spoke the bell 
of St. Germain aux Auxerrous tolled, heavy and dooming, 
through the darkness. Forth issued the courtly butchers to 
their work of blood. At the onset the brave old admiral was 
massacred, and the Huguenots in the Louvre were dispatched 
by halberdiers, with the Court ladies looking on. Armed men, 
shouting, " For God and the King," traversed the streets, and 
forced the dwellings of the heretics. Sixty thousand assassins, 
wielding all the weapons of the brigand and the soldier, ran 
about on all sides, murdering without distinction of sex or age, 
or suffering, all of the ill-fated creed; the air was laden with a 
tumult of sounds, in which the roar of arquebus and the crash 
of hatchet, mingled with blaspheming taunt, and dying groan. 

" For hideously,' mid rape and sack, 
The murderer's laughter answered back 
His prey's convulsive laughter." 

The populace, already inflamed by the sight of blood, followed 
in the track of slaughter, mutilating the corpses and dragging 
them through the kennels in derision. The leaders, the Dukes 
of Guise, Nevers and Montpensier, riding fiercely from street to 
street, like the demons of the storm, roused the passion into 
frenzy by their cries — " Kill, kill ! Blood-letting is good in 
August. By the king's command. Death to the Huguenot! 
Kill ! " On sped the murder, until city and palace were gorged. 
Men forgot their manhood, and women their tenderness. In 
worse than Circean transformation, the human was turned into 
the brutal, and there prowled about the streets a race of ghouls 
and vampires, consumed with an appetite for blood. The roads 
were almost impassable from the corpses of men, women and 
children — a new and appalling barricade. " The earth was 
covered thick with other clay, which her own clay did cover." 
Paris became one vast Red Sea, whose blood-waves had no 
refluent tide. The sun of that blessed Sabbath shone, with its 



P UNS110N— O WEN. 2 1 9 

clear kind light, upon thousands of dishonored and desolate 
homes; and the air, which should have been hushed from sound 
until the psalm of devotion woke it, carried upon its startled 
billows the yells of blasphemers, flushed and drunk with murder, 
and the shrieks of parting spirits, like a host of unburied wit- 
nesses, crying from beneath the altar unto God, " How long, 
O Lord, how long ! " 

The massacre was renewed in the provinces. For seven long 
days Paris was a scene of pillage. Fifteen thousand in the 
capital, and one hundred thousand throughout the whole of 
France, are supposed to have perished, many by the edge of the 
sword, and many more by the protracted perils of flight and 
famine. — William Morley Punshon, LL. D. 

MARIE ANTOINETTE. 

(Born 1755 — died 1793.) 

It is four o'clock in the morning. The widowed Queen of 
France stands calm and resigned in her cell, listening with a 
melancholy smile to the tumult of the mob outside. A faint 
illumination announces the approach of day ; it is the last she 
has to live. Seating herself at a table, she writes with hurried 
hand a last letter of ardent tenderness to the sister of her hus- 
band, the pious Madame Elizabeth, and to her children; and 
now she passionately presses the insensible paper to her lips, as 
the sole remaining link between those dear ones and herself. 
Immediately in the front of the palace of the Tuileries there 
rises a dark, ominous mass. Around is a sea of human faces ; 
above, the cold frown of a winter's sky. With a firm step the 
victim ascends the stairs of the scaffold, her white garments 
wave in the chill breeze, a black ribbon, by which her cap is 
confined, beats to and fro against her pale cheeks. You may 
see that she is unmindful of her executioners — she glances, nay, 
almost smiles, at the sharp edge of the guillotine, and then, 
turning her eyes toward the temple, utters, in a few agitated 
words, her last earthly farewell to Louis and her children. 
There is a hush — a stillness of the grave — for the very heads- 
man trembles as the horrible blade falls : anon, a moment's 



220 



THE DYING. 



delay. And now, look ! -No ! rather veil your eyes from the 
dreadful sight ; close your ears from that fiendish shout, Vive la 
Republique ! It is over ! the sacrifice is accomplished ! the 
weary spirit is at rest ! — A. Owen, " Heroines of History." 

MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. 

(Born 1542 — died 1587.) 

She concluded her prayer for peace to the world, constancy 
to all suffering persecution, and for grace and the enlightenment 
of the Holy Spirit at this her last hour, with these words : " Like 
as thy arms, Lord Jesus Christ, were stretched out upon the 
cross, even so receive me within the stretched-out arms of thy 
mercy ! " So fervid was her piety, so touching her effusions of 
feeling, so admirable her courage, that she drew tears from 
almost all who were present. Consistently with this spirit she 
prayed fervently for Queen Elizabeth. The last moments were 
spent in consoling her maids, and distributing her blessing and 
her pardon ; then kneeling down, she bowed her neck to the 
executioner, exclaiming, " My God ! I have hoped in thee — into 
thy hands I commit myself." As her head-dress was removed, 
her hair was discovered prematurely silvered by care and grief. 
The axe, instead of falling on the neck, struck the back of her 
head and wounded her — yet she made no movement nor uttered 
a word of complaint. Upon repeating the blow the executioner 
struck off her head, and, holding it up, exclaimed, " God save 
Queen Elizabeth! " to which Dr. Fletcher answered, "Thus may 
all her enemies perish." "Amen! " answered the Earl of Kent 
alone ; every other eye was dimmed with tears, every other voice 
was stifled in commiseration. 

JANE, QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 

This excellent queen was the daughter of Henry II., King 
of Navarre, and of Margaret of Orleans, sister to Francis I., 
King of France. She was born in the year 1528. From her 
childhood she was carefully educated in the Protestant religion, 
to which she steadfastly adhered all her days. Bishop Burnet 
says of her, " That she both received the Reformation and 



CLARK— BEE CHAM. 2 2 1 

brought her subjects to it ; that she not only reformed her courts 
but the whole principality, to such a degree that the golden age 
seemed to have returned under her, or, rather, Christianity ap- 
peared again with its primitive purity and lustre." 

This illustrious queen, being invited to attend the nuptials ot 
her son and the king of France's sister, fell a sacrifice to the 
cruel machinations of the French court against the Protestant 
religion. The religious fortitude and genuine piety with which 
she was endued did not, however, desert her in this great con- 
flict and at the approach of death. 

To some that were about her, near the conclusion of her time> 
she said : " I receive all this as from the hand of God, my most 
merciful Father ; nor have I during my extremity feared to die, 
much less murmured against God for inflicting this chastisement 
upon me — knowing that whatsoever he does with me he so 
orders it, that, in the end, it shall turn to my everlasting good.'' 

When she saw her ladies weeping about her bed, she blamed 
them, saying, " Weep not for me, I pray you. God, by this 
sickness, calls me hence to enjoy a better life ; and now I shall 
enter into the desired haven, toward which this frail vessel of 
mine has been a long time steering." 

She expressed some concern for her children, as they would 
be deprived of her in their tender years ; but added, " I doubt 
not that God himself will be their Father and Protector, as he 
has ever been mine in my greatest afflictions. I therefore com- 
mit them wholly to his government and fatherly care. I believe 
that Christ is my only Mediator and Saviour ; and I look for 
salvation from none other. O, my God, in thy good time de- 
liver me from the troubles of this present life, that I may attain 
to the felicity which thou hast promised to bestow upon me." — 
Bishop D. W. Clark. 

DEATH OF REV. JOHN WESLEY, M. A. 

(Born 1703 — died 1791.) 

On Tuesday evening, February 22d, 1 791, he preached at City 
road ; and on Wednesday he went to Leatherhead, and preached 
to a small company what proved to be his last sermon, from 



222 



HIE DYING. 



" Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him 
while he is near." On Friday he became so alarmingly ill that 
Dr. Whitehead was sent for; but his skill proved unavailing. 
Mr. Wesley got rapidly worse, and felt that his end was draw- 
ing nigh. In this solemn crisis this eminent servant of God 
experienced the supporting influence of that religion which he 
had been the honored instrument of reviving in his own land, 
and in America, to so great an extent. Great as had been his 
labors in the cause of Christ, they were no more the foundation 
of his hope in death than they had been in life. Eight years 
before, when at Bristol, he had an alarming attack; and then, 
while contemplating his critical situation, he said to Mr. Brad- 
ford : " I have been reflecting on my past life ; I have been 
wandering up and down between fifty and sixty years, endeavor- 
ing in my poor way to do a little good to my fellow-creatures 
and now, it is probable, that there are but a few steps between 
me and death ; and what have I done to trust to for salvation ? 
I can see nothing which I have done or suffered that will bear 
looking at. I have no other plea than this : 

" ' I the chief of sinners am, 
But Jesus died for me.' " 

This was his language to the last. On Sunday, the 27th, he 
alluded to his views and feelings in that illness. He had been 
silent for some time, examining, as it appeared, the ground of 
his confidence, when he said : " There is no need of more ; when 
at Bristol my words were, 

" ' I the chief of sinners am, 
But Jesus died for me.' " 

And on one asking, " Is this the present language of your heart, 
and do you feel now as you did then?" he answered, " Yes ; " 
and afterwards added, in reference to Christ, " He is all ! He is 
all ! " The day following he reverted to the same subject, and 
said : " How necessary it is for every one to be on the right 
foundation!" and then quoted again his favorite stanza, expres- 
sive of the entire dependence of his soul on the sacrificial death 



REV. JOHN BEECH AM. 223 

of Christ And he strikingly proved how available is that plea. 
The most cheering manifestations of the divine presence were 
vouchsafed to him. On another occasion he had called for pen 
and ink, but when they were brought, being unable to write, 
one said to him, " Let me write for you, sir; tell me what you 
would say." He replied, " Nothing, but that God is with us; " 
and not long after he broke out in a manner which, considering 
his weakness, astonished all present, in singing, 

" I'll praise my Maker while I've breath; 
And when my voice is lost in death, 

Praise shall employ my nobler powers; 
My days of praise shall ne'er be past, 
While life and thought and being last, 

Or immortality endures." 

Shortly after he had sung this verse, he became evidently 
worse, and his voice failed in endeavoring to sing part of an- 
other hymn. Having rested a while, he desired those who were 
with him to " pray and praise." They kneeled down, and the 
room seemed to be filled with the divine presence. Having 
given directions respecting his funeral, .he again begged they 
would pray and praise. Several friends who were in the house 
being called up, they all kneeled down again, and he joined 
with them in great fervor of spirit; but in particular parts of the 
prayer his whole soul seemed to be engaged in a manner which 
evidently showed how ardently he longed for the full accom- 
plishment of their united desires. And when one of the 
preachers prayed, that if God were about to take him away, he 
would still continue his work, Mr. Wesley responded, "Amen!" 
In the course of the day he repeated, several times, " The best 
of all is, God is with us," once raising his feeble arm in token 
of victory as he uttered with great emphasis the heart-reviving 
words. During the night following he frequently attempted to 
repeat the psalm, part of which he had before sung ; but such 
was his weakness, he could only utter, 

" I'll praise — I'll praise." 

On Wednesday morning, March 2d, it was evident that the 



224 



THE DYING. 



closing scene drew near ; and Mr. Bradford having prayed with 
him, he was heard to articulate, " Farewell ! " This was the 
last word he uttered; and while several of his friends were 
kneeling around his bed, he passed, without a groan or a 
struggle, into the joyful presence of his Lord. 

— Rev. John Beecham. 

AUGUSTUS M. TOPLADY. 

This well-known English minister, whose hymns, — " Rock of 
Ages," and others, — have immortalized him, died of slow con- 
sumption at the early age of thirty-eight. His death was one 
of the most triumphant in the annals of Christian literature. 
He seemed literally to dwell on the borders of the glory land, 
and the constantly recurring visions of immortal life made him 
groan to depart to be with Christ. ■■ The celestial city," he 
observed, " rises full in sight ; the sense of interest in the cov- 
enant of grace becomes clearer and brighter ; the book of life is 
opened to the eye of assurance ; the Holy Spirit more feelingly 
applies the blood of sprinkling, and warms the soul with that 
robe of righteousness which Jesus wrought. The once feeble 
believer is made to be as David. The once trembling hand is 
enabled to lay fast hold on the cross of Christ. The sun goes 
down without a cloud." 

As the hour of departure drew near, his conversation seemed 
more and more heavenly. " Oh ! " he exclaimed, " how this soul 
of mine longs to be gone ! Like a bird imprisoned in a cage, it 
longs to take its flight. O that I had wings like a dove, then 
would I fly away to the realms of bliss, and be at rest forever. 
O that some guardian angel might be commissioned ; for I long 
to be absent from this body, and to be present with the Lord." 

"What a great thing it is to rejoice in death," he observed, 
when yet nearer the final moment. " The love of Christ is un- 
utterable. O what delights ! Who can fathom the joys of the 
third heaven ! " 

At the last he called his friends and inquired whether they 
could give him up. Being answered affirmatively, he rejoiced 
and said, " It will not be long before God takes me ; for no 



POTTS—CARL YLE. 



225 



mortal man can live after the glories which God has manifested 
to my soul." In a few moments his prediction was fulfilled, and 
his joyous spirit was with God. — Editor. 

DEATH OF GOETHE. 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar, on the 22d of 
March, 1832. It was about eleven in the morning: " he expired," 
says the record, " without any apparent suffering, having a few 
minutes previously called for paper for the purpose of writing, 
and expressed his delight at the arrival of spring." A beautiful 
death ; like that of a soldier found faithful at his post, and in the 
cold hand his arms still grasped ! The poet's last words are a 
greeting of the new-awakened earth ; his last movement is to 
work at his appointed task. Beautiful ! what we might call a 
classic death ; if it were not rather an Elijah translation — in a 
chariot, not of fire and terror, but of hope and soft vernal sun- 
beams. It was at Frankfort-on-the-Main, on the 28th of 
August, 1749, that this man entered the world — and now gently 
welcoming the birthday of his eighty-second spring, he closes 
his eyes and takes farewell. 

So then, our greatest has departed. That melody of life, with 
its cunning tones, which took captive ear and heart, has gone 
silent; the heavenly force that dwelt here victorious over so 
much, is here no longer ; thus far, not farther, by speech and by 
act, shall the wise man utter himself forth. The end ! What 
solemn meaning in that sound, as it peals mournfully through 
the soul, when a living friend has passed away ! All now is 
closed, irrevocable ; the changing life-picture, growing daily into 
new coherence, under new touches and hues, has suddenly 
become completed and unchangeable ; there, as it lay, it is dipped 
from this moment in the ether of the heavens, and shines trans- 
figured, to endure even so — forever, time and time's empire ; 
stern, wide, devouring, yet not without their grandeur ! The 
week-day man, who was one of us, has put on the garment of 
eternity, and become radiant and triumphant ; the present is all 
at once the past; hope is suddenly cut away, and only the back- 
ward vistas of memory remain, shone on by a light that pro- 
ceeds not from this earthly sun. 
*5 



22 6 THE DYING. 

Goethe reckoned Schiller happy that he died young, in the 
full vigor of his days ; that he could " figure him as a youth for- 
ever." To himself a different, higher destiny was appointed. 
Through all the changes of man's life, onward to its extreme 
verge, he was to go ; and through them all nobly. In youth, 
flatterings of fortune, uninterrupted outward prosperity cannot 
corrupt him; a wise observer must remark, "only a Goethe, at 
the sum of earthly happiness, can keep his phcenix-wings un- 
singed." Through manhood, in the most complex relation, as 
poet, courtier, politician, man of business, man of speculation ; in 
the middle of revolutions and counter-revolutions, outward and 
spiritual ; with the world loudly for him, with the world loudly 
or silently against him ; in all seasons and situations, he holds 
equally on his way. Old age itself, which is called dark and 
feeble, he was to render lovely ; who that looked upon him there, 
venerable in himself, and in the world's reverence, ever the 
clearer, the purer, but could have prayed that he too were such 
an old man? And did not the kind Heavens continue kind, and 
grant to a career so glorious the worthiest end ? 

Such was Goethe's life ; such has his departure been — he 
sleeps now beside his Schiller and his Carl August ; so had the 
Prince willed it, that between these two should be his own final 
rest. In life they were united, in death they are not divided. 
The unwearied workman now rests from his labors ; the fruit of 
these is left growing and to grow. His earthly years have been 
numbered and ended ; but of his activity (for it stood rooted in 
the eternal) there is no end. All that we mean by the higher 
literature of Germany, which is the higher literature of Europe, 
already gathers round this man as its creator ; of which grand 
object, dawning mysteriously on a world that hoped not for it, 
who is there that can assume the significance and far-reaching 
influences ? The literature of Europe will pass away ; Europe 
itself, the earth itself, will pass away; this little life-boat of aw 
earth, with its noisy crew of mankind, and all their troubled 
history, will one day have vanished, faded like a cloud-speck 
from the azure of the All ! What then is man ? What then is 
man ? He endures but for an hour, and is crushed before the 



CARLYLE— POTTS. 22? 

moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a faithful man is 
there already (as all faith, from the beginning, gives assurance) a 
something that pertains not to this wild death-element of time ; 
that triumphs over time, and is, and will be, when time shall be 
no more. — Thomas Carlyle. 

SAMUEL RUTHERFORD. 

What intelligent Christian is not familiar with the name of 
Samuel Rutherford! He is the author of some of the brightest 
religious thoughts that adorn the pages of literature. Scotland 
has produced many " burning and shining lights," but Ruther- 
ford's star of fame will be among the last to set. He was a 
college professor, and a glorious advocate of liberty, learning 
and religion. When parliament summoned him to answer for 
his "heresy," he was dying. "Tell the parliament," said he to 
the messenger, " that I have received a summons to a higher 
bar; I must needs answer that first ; and when the day you name 
shall come, I shall be where few of you shall enter." 

Grand soul ! " Remember," he once wrote, " that your ac- 
counts are coming upon you as fast as time posteth ! " This 
truth he kept in mind for himself, and his death could hardly 
be called a death ; it was a new life. Ministers were around him, 
and with them he plead : " There is none like Christ. O, dear 
brethren, preach for Christ, pray for Christ, do all for Christ ; 
feed the flock of God. And O, beware of men-pleasing." Rally- 
ing from a fainting spell, he said : " I feel, I feel, I believe, I joy, 
I rejoice, I feed on manna ; my eyes shall see my Redeemer, 
and I shall be ever with him. And what would you more ? I 
have been a sinful man ; but I stand at the best pass that ever 
a man did. Christ is mine and I am his. Glory, glory to my 
Creator and Redeemer forever. Glory shines in Immanuel's 
land. O for arms to embrace him ! O for a well-tuned harp !" 
Thus he continued till death was swallowed up in victory, illus- 
trating Blair's adage that a peaceful and happy death is, by the 
appointment of Heaven, connected with a holy and virtuous life. 
— Editor. 



2*8 THE DYING. 

WHITFIELD'S DEATH. 

The time came for Whitfield to die. The man had been im« 
mortal till his work was done. His path had been bright — and 
it grew brighter to the end, like that of the just. 

" You had better be in bed, Mr. Whitfield," said his host, the 
day he preached his last sermon. 

" True," said the dying evangelist, and, clasping his hands 
cried : u I am weary in, not of, thy work, Lord Jesus." 

He preached his last sermon at Newburyport. Pale and 
dying, he uttered therein one of the most pathetic sentences 
which ever came to his lips : "I go to my everlasting rest. 
My sun has risen, shone, and is setting — nay, it is about to rise 
and shine forever. I have not lived in vain. And though I 
could live to preach Christ a thousand years, I die to be with 
him — which is far better." 

The shaft was leveled. That day he said : " I am dying ! " 
He ran to the window ; lavender drops were offered — but all 
help was vain — his work was done. The doctor said : " He i:s 
a dead man." And so he was, and died in silence. Christ 
required no dying testimony from one whose life had been a 
constant testimony. 

Thus passed away, on September 30, 1770, one of the greatest 
spirits that ever inhabited a human tabernacle. The world has 
ever been an immeasurable gainer by his life. He had preached 
eighty thousand sermons, and they had but two keynotes: 1st. 
Man is guilty — he must be pardoned. 2d. Man is immortal — < 
he must be happy or wretched forever. Weeping filled New- 
bury, flags floated half-mast, and the ships fired minute-guns. 

" Mortals cried, a man is dead; 
Angels sang, a child is born." 

Rev. Daniel Rodgers, remembering, in his prayer, that Whit- 
field had been his spiritual father, burst into tears, and cried : 
" My father ! my father ! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen 
thereof." 



EDWIN L. JANES. 229 

DEATH OF EDWARD PAYSON, D. D. 

On Sabbath, October 21, 1827, his last agony commenced, 
attended with that labored breathing and rattling in the throat 
which rendered articulation extremely difficult. His daughter 
was summoned from the Sabbath-school, and received his dying 
kiss and " God bless you, my daughter ! " He smiled on a group 
of his church-members, and exclaimed, with holy emphasis, 
* Peace, peace ! victory ! " He smiled on his wife and children, 
and said in the language of dying Joseph : " I am going, but 
God will surely be with you." 

He rallied from the death conflict, and said to his physician, 
that although he had suffered the pangs of death, and got almost 
within the gates of Paradise, yet if it was God's will that he 
should come back and suffer still more, he was resigned. He 
passed through a similar scene in the afternoon and again 
revived. 

On Monday morning his dying agonies returned in all their 
extremity. For three hours every breath was a groan. On 
being asked if his sufferings were greater than on the preced- 
ing Sunday night, he answered : " Incomparably greater." He 
said the greatest temporal blessing of which he could conceive 
would be one breath of air. 

Mrs. Payson, fearing from the expression of suffering on his 
countenance that he was in mental distress, questioned him. He 
replied : " Faith and patience hold out." These were the last 
words of this dying Christian hero ! Yet his eyes spoke after 
his tongue became motionless. He looked on Mrs. Payson, 
and then rested his eyes on his eldest son with an expression 
which said, and was so interpreted by all present : " Behold thy 
mother ! " 

He gradually sank away, till, about the going down of the 
sun, his chastened and purified spirit, all mantled with the glory 
of Christian triumph in life and death, ascended to share the 
everlasting glory of his Redeemer before the eternal throne. — 
Edwin L. Janes. 



230 THE DYING. 

PRINCE ALBERT'S DEATH. 

The words in which queen Victoria narrates the death of the 
prince are so simple and so pathetic that it is impossible not 
to be moved by them : 

" The day," her majesty writes, " was very fine and very bright 
I asked whether I might go out for a breath of air. The doctor 
answered: 'Yes, just close by, for a quarter of an hour.' At 
about twelve I went out upon the terrace with Alice. The mili- 
tary band was playing at a distance, and I burst into tears and 
came home again. I hurried over at once. Dr. Watson was in 
the room. I asked him whether Albert was not better, as he 
seemed stronger, though he took very little notice, and he an- 
swered : ' We are very much frightened, but don't and won't 
give up hope.' They would not let Albert sit up to take his 
nourishment, as he wasted his strength by doing so. ' The pulse 
keeps up,' they said ; 'it is not worse.' Every hour, every 
minute was a gain ; and Sir James Clark was very hopeful — he 
had seen much worse cases. But the breathing was the alarm- 
ing thing : it was so rapid. There was what they call a dusky 
hue about his face and hands, which I knew was not good. I 
made some observation about it to Dr. Jenner, and was alarmed 
by seeing he seemed to notice it. Albert folded his arms and 
began arranging his hair, just as he used to do when well and 
he was dressing. These were said to be bad signs. Strange ! 
as though he were preparing for another and greater journey. 

" So things went on, not really worse, but not better. It was 
thought necessary to change his bed, and he was even able to 
get out of bed and sit up. He tried to get into bed alone, but 
could not, and Lohlein and one of the pages of the back stairs 
helped to place him on the other bed. The digestion was per- 
fect ; but when I observed to Dr. Jenner that this was surely a 
good sign, he said : 'Alas ! with such breathing it is of no avail!' 
The doctors said plenty of air passed through the lungs, and 
1 so long as this was so there was still hope.' " 

Mr. Theodore Martin adds : " The queen had retired for a 
little to the adjoining room, but hearing the prince's breathing 
become worse she returned to the sick-chamber. She found 



THEODORE MARTIN. 



231 



the prince bathed in perspiration, which the doctors said might 
be an effort of nature to throw off the fever. Bending over him 
she whispered : l cs ist kleines Frauchen I " (' Tis your own little 
wife ! ') and he bowed his head and kissed her. At this time 
he seemed half dozing, quite calm, and only wishing to be left 
quiet and undisturbed, ' as he used to be when tired and not 
well.' Again, as the evening advanced, her majesty retired to 
give way to her grief in the adjoining room. She had not 
long been gone when a rapid change set in, and the princess 
Alice was requested by Sir James Clark to ask her majesty to 
return. The import of the summons was too plain. When the 
queen entered she took the prince's left hand, ' which was al- 
ready cold, though the breathing was quite gentle,' and knelt 
down by his side. On the other side of the bed was the prin- 
cess Alice, while at its foot knelt the prince of Wales and the 
princess Helena. Not far from the foot of the bed were prince 
Ernest Leiningen, the physicians, and the prince's valet, Lohlein. 
General the Hon. Robert Bruce knelt opposite to the queen, 
and the dean of Windsor, Sir Charles Phipps, and General Grey 
were also in the room. In the solemn hush of that mournful 
chamber there was such grief as had rarely hallowed any death- 
bed. A great light, which had blessed the world, and which 
the mourners had but yesterday hoped might long bless it, was 
waning fast away. A husband, a father, a friend, a master, en- 
deared by every quality by which man in such relations can 
win the love of his fellow-man, was passing into the silent land, 
and his loving glance, his wise counsels, his firm, manly thought 
should be known among them no more. The castle clock 
chimed the third quarter after ten. Calm and peaceful grew 
the beloved form : the features settled into the beauty of a per- 
fectly serene repose; two or three long, but gentle, breaths 
were drawn, and that great soul had fled, to seek a nobler scope 
for its aspirations in the world within the veil, for which it had 
often yearned, where there is rest for the weary, and where ' the 
spirits of the just are made perfect.'" 



2 ^ 2 THE DYING. 

KINGSLEY'S LAST DAYS. 

There is nothing, even in the most pathetic history of fiction, 
more touching than the narrative of the last days of Charles 
Kingsley. 

His wedded life had been supremely happy. He was wont 
to sum up its story in three Latin words that have been placed 
on his tombstone : "Amavimus, amamns, amabimns " — " We 
have loved, we love, we shall love." It was a love, on his part, 
of which his wife could say that for thirty-six years it had never 
stooped — in sickness or health, by day or night — from its own 
lofty level to a hasty word, an impatient gesture, or a sel- 
fish act. 

It had been his life-long hope and prayer that they might lay 
down their work on earth and go to heaven together. She had 
been in feeble health, when a sudden turn in her illness brought 
her near the gates of death. He could not believe there was 
danger till he was told there was no hope. He heard the words 
as his own death-warrant. But he rallied all his life-forces to 
jive comfort, and care, and Christian cheer in the sick-room. 
He promised his wife to fight for life for the children's sake. 
But his heart was broken, and the unequal contest was a short 
one. Pneumonia laid severe hold of him. He had been warned 
that his recovery depended upon avoiding any change of tem- 
perature. But one day he leaped from his bed, ran into his 
wife's room, and, taking her by the hand, said : " This is heaven. 
Don't speak." A fit of coughing came on, and he could say no 
more. He lingered for some days, waiting for the summons 
that he supposed had already come for her, saying over and 
over again, " It is all right — all is as it should be," and finally 
passed away, leaving her to recover and tell us the story of his 
life, as no one else could have told it so well. 

WILLIAM CARVOSSO. 

The long-desired hour of his departure arrived at last. In 
full possession of his senses, this holy man, about to enter the 
presence of the Highest, remembered "his character as a sinner/' 
and remarked, sweetly : 



DANIEL WISE, £>. D. 233 

" I have this morning been looking about for my sins, but I 
cannot find any of them. They are all gone." 

Just before the end he requested his children to pray, and re- 
sponded to their petitions with holy animation. As they arose 
from their knees, he exclaimed, " God bless you all! " 

It was his parting benediction. An indescribable expression 
of joy and triumph then irradiated his countenance. He was 
evidently looking into heaven. To the surprise of all he then 
gave out the doxology, " Praise God from whom all blessings 
flow," with a tone and vigor equal to his best days. To their 
still greater astonishment, he attempted to raise the tune. But 
before he had completed the strain his voice failed. Literally it 
was lost in death, for he " suddenly and sweetly slept in Jesus." 
Just as his breath was departing, some one remarked that dying 
Christians had sometimes signified their happiness, after losing 
the power of speech, by raising their hand. Instantly the ven- 
erable patriarch lifted his left arm, and then let it fall back 
gently upon the bed. When it ceased to move, the soul of Car- 
vosso was " absent from the body and present with the Lord." 
His eighty-five years of life on earth were ended, and his life in 
eternal glory begun. — Daniel Wise, D. D. 

TRIUMPHANT DEPARTURE OF BISHOP DAVIS WASGATT CLARK. 

(Born in 1813 — died 1871.) 

For about ten days his life seemed to be trembling in the 
balance, when he again revived a little and ventured on the jour- 
ney home to Cincinnati, which he reached on the 19th of April, 
1 87 1, announcing to his children and friends that he "had come 
home to die." So it proved, though he lingered amid the fluc- 
tuations of disease for a little more than a month longer. This 
was a precious month ; its days and nights were filled in that 
sorrow-stricken household with beams of heavenly light, with 
visions of heavenly hope and joy. A few of these sacred scenes 
we must give to our readers, drawn from the record made by a 
loving and competent hand. 

April 23d, the first Sabbath after his return to Cincinnati, he 
said, " To-day is Sunday, is it not ? I never again expect to go 



234 



THE DYING. 



to church till I enter the church triumphant above. . . . How 
time delays, and yet it hurries fast enough ! The summons 
don't trouble me — don't trouble me. If God would only come 
— and yet I don't know that I ought to ask for one pang less. 
It is all right— all right." 
Later he repeated : 

" When for eternal worlds we steer, 
And seas are calm and skies are clear; " 

and, turning to his eldest daughter, he said, " Sing it." While 
she sang, he joined with a clear voice in the lines, 

" I've Canaan's goodly land in view, 
And realms of endless day." 

When reduced very low, he frequently said, " What a strange 
outcome of life this seems to me ! And yet not stranger than it 
may be to all of you. God sees not as man seeth." And then 
he repeated many times: "The Lord is my refuge and strength; 
a very present .help in trouble. Amen and Amen ! " 

On the 25 th of April there was a decided change in the 
Bishop's condition, so that flattering hopes of his ultimate re- 
covery were entertained. This favorable change continued for 
almost two weeks. One day his wife said to him, " Does it not 
seem a long way back to health and active life?" "Yes," he re- 
sponded, " it would have been shorter and brighter the other way." 

Most of the time his mind was perfectly clear on every point, 
and he conversed freely and with almost his wonted vigor. To 
one of the ministers, who watched with him one night, he re- 
peated the greater part of a poem of Otway Curry — " The Great 
Hereafter " — always a favorite with him, telling the volume of 
the " Repository " ki which it was to be found. 

During these weeks many beautiful expressions fell from his 
lips — a precious treasure to those who heard them. 

At one time he said to his wife, " I don't want you to be 
troubled about me, but rejoice and give thanks. It will all be 
well. If there are any indications that the end draws near, make 
no effort to detain me. Let me depart and be with Jesus, whida. 
is far better." 



GENERAL CLINTON B. FISKE. 235 

On Friday, May 19th, when sight and hearing were apparently 
gone, he put out his hand to the members of his family gathered 
around him, and, the tears rolling down his cheeks, imprinted a 
kiss upon the lips of each one ; a mute but eloquent farewell. 
Just at twilight he suddenly roused, and though he had not 
spoken more than a sentence for nearly two days, he said, feebly 
but distinctly, "Tireless company! tireless song!" He paused 
for a moment, and then added, " The song of the angels is a 
glorious song. It thrills my ears even now." Pausing again, he 
spoke with renewed strength, " I am going to join the angels' 
song. Glorious God ! blessed Saviour ! bless the Lord, O my 
soul ! bless the Lord, O my soul ! " and sank into an uncon- 
scious state, from which he never roused till the glad messenger 
came and ushered him into the gates of heaven. 

So fell asleep in Jesus one of the noblest men American 
Methodism has yet produced. — Ladies' Repository. 

DR. EDDY'S CLOSING HOURS. 

{Note. — Dr. T. M. Eddy was one x of the most brilliant orators and tireless workers of the 
American ministry. Though comparatively young, he had filled some of the most important posi- 
tions of his Church. At the time of his death he was one of the secretaries of the missionary 
society. His death-scene is described by General Clinton B. Fiske as follows :) 

Sunday, midnight, October 4, Dr. Eddy's physicians advised 
me that he must die, and suggested to me that I should impart 
this information to the suffering saint. I performed the melan- 
choly duty as best I could. He received the intelligence with 
great calmness, but said he thought his medical attendants must 
be mistaken. It did not seem possible to him that this was his 
fatal illness. His exact words were as follows : 

" Clinton, it does not seem possible that this can be my fatal 
illness. There is too much work to be done that I should 
accomplish. I am just in the prime of life. I know how to 
work for Jesus, and I love to work for his cause. Does it not 
ssern strange that I should be called home from the, vineyard, 
when they are so many laggards in the field whitening for the 
harvest? Nevertheless, God's will be done. If I am to die now, 
there are certain items of business I must adjust. Sit down 
here with the family, and I will dictate my wishes." 



236 T HE DYING. 

With composure most marvelous he dictated his will, and 
gave advice to his executors respecting his every interest in this 
world ; after which he dismissed all thought of his earthly affairs, 
and summoned us to prayer at his bedside, in which service he 
was himself the most fervent. He then, in the most touching 
manner, spoke to each member of his family present, and left 
messages of love, and earnest words of invitation to holy living, 
for absent ones. From this hour — 2 A. m. on Monday morning 
— until daylight, the scene in the chamber of this good man 
was impressively solemn, and his golden words would make a 
volume. He left messages for his associate secretaries, for his 
conference (Baltimore), for the Missionary Society, and the 
Church at large. Speaking of his life-work, he said : 

" I have no regret that my life has been spent in holding up 
Jesus to my fellow-men as their Saviour. Preaching Christ is 
the only work which brings sweet, perpetual contentment. 

" Dying is a fact — that takes care of itself. Faith in the 
great hereafter through Christ is my strength. 

" I am now in a most sweet state of mind, nearing the gates. 
Tarry not, O Lord, but come now." 

" Beyond the parting and the meeting, 
I shall be soon. 
Beyond the farewell and the greeting, 
Beyond the pulse's fever beating, 

I shall be soon. 
Love, rest, and home — sweet, sweet home, 
O how sweet it will be there to meet 
The dear ones, all at home." 

To Mshop Janes he said: "I am resting in Jesus, O so 
sweetly, a poor sinner saved by grace: but saved, God be 
thanked." 

For more than an hour of his last night he uninterruptedly 
spoke of the great needs of the Church, and the imperative 
demands upon our Missionary Society to take advanced ground. 
i( Forward is the word — no falling back ; we must take the 
world for Christ ; say so to our people. God calls us ; louder 
than thunder on the dome of the sky the Lord strikes the 



F1SKE—P0 TTS. 23^ 

hour. We must throw down our gold in the presence of God. 
Amen." 

More than a score of times he called upon us, who stood 
beside him, to see to it that the Church be roused to its plain 
duty to possess the world for the Master. His face was beau- 
tiful as the light of the gates of the celestial city flashed upon 
him. 

One very pleasing incident before losing power of speech was 
that of stretching his hands over the heads of his weeping 
family and pronouncing the benediction. How emphatic were 
the words, 

" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon, and abide with 
you evermore. Amen." 

About one o'clock, on his last morning, he lifted his trembling 
hands, and endeavored to clasp them in ecstasy. He was so weak 
they passed each other, scarcely touching, but he clearly 
shouted : 

" H ALLELUIA ! H ALLELUIA ! H ALLELUIA ! " 

His last words were : 

"Sing and Pray — Eternity dawns!" 

We gathered around the rejoicing, triumphant saint, and sang, 
"Jesus, Lover of my soul." Dr. Tiffany led us in prayer. 

We continued to sing for an hour, during which time he 
manifested exceeding joy; he was filled with glory, trying in 
vain to speak. 

Just before his last moments I said to him : " Dr. Eddy, is the 
way still bright and joyous? Is Jesus very precious to you 
now? If you understand me and cannot speak, please raise 
your hand." He raised his hand as if voting at a conference, 
and held it up until the ebbing pulse grew fainter and fainter. 
In a few moments it was still, and the soul had rest in the bosom 
of the Saviour of mankind. 

TRANSLATION OF BISHOP HAVEN. 

On Saturday morning, January 3, 1880, in Maiden, Massa- 
chusetts, Bishop Gilbert Haven's physician said that his last day 
had come, and that it would do him no harm to see his friends. 



238 tffE DYING. 

Many were near at hand. Others were summoned by telegram 
and by messenger, until groups gathered around that couch, 
touched with the light of immortal glory, to muse over the 
transition from death unto life. A physician who was present 
said : " I never saw a person die so before." A clergyman 
remarks, " To me it did not seem that I was in the presence of 
death. The whole atmosphere of the chamber was that of a 
joyous and festive hour. Only the tears of kindred and friends 
were suggestive of death. I felt that I was summoned to see a 
conquering hero crowned." We have preserved some of the 
Bishop's utterances to different persons, as they were reported in 
the public prints. As Dr. Daniel Steele entered his chamber, 
the Bishop lifted up his hand, exclaiming, in his familiar way, 
" O Dan, Dan, a thousand, thousand blessings on you. The 
Lord has been giving you great blessings, and me little ones, 
and now he has given me a great one. He has called me to 
heaven before you." " Do you find the words of Paul true, ' O 
death, where is thy sting?'" inquired Dr. Steele. "There is no 
death, there is no death," interrupted the Bishop ; " I have been 
fighting death for six weeks, and to-day I find there is no 
death." Then he repeated again and again John viii. 5 1 : 
" Shall never see death, glory ! glory ! glory ! " In life he 
seldom, if ever, shouted ; he certainly had a right to shout in 
death. "You have a great Saviour," was remarked to him. 
" Yes," he answered, " that is the whole of the gospel, the whole 
of it." With difficulty he repeated : 

" Happy, if with my latest breath 
I may but gasp his name ; 
Preach him to all, and cry in death, 
Behold, behold the Lamb." 

He had an immediate opportunity to preach Christ by wit- 
nessing to his saving power, for his counseling physician from 
Boston had come to bid him farewell. Said the dying man, as 
he took the doctor's hand, " I am satisfied with your attentions ; 
you have done all that human skill can do to heal me. I die 
happy. / believe in Jesus Christ!' To Dr. Lindsay he also re- 



PO TTS— HUNTER. 



239 



marked : " Good-night, doctor. When we meet again it will be 
good-morning." To his old classmate, Dr. Newhall, he said : 
" I have got the start of you. I thought you would go first. 
Your mind has been clouded a little, but it is all light over 
there." When Dr. Mallalieu approached him he put his arms 
around his neck and drew him to his face and exclaimed : " My 
dear old friend, I am glad to see you. You and I would not 
have it so if we had our way, but God knows best. It is all 
right ; all right ! We have been living in great times, but there 
are greater times coming. You have been my true friend — you 
never failed me. You must stand by the colored man when I 
am gone. Stand by the colored man." Then he spoke of dying, 
and said : " Oh, but it is so beautiful, so pleasant, so delightful. 
I see no river of death. God lifts me up in his arms. There is 
no darkness ; it is all light and brightness. I am gliding away 
into God, floating up into heaven." As the hour drew near, and 
death preyed upon him, his faith failed not. His right hand was 
dead, and black from mortification ; but holding up his arm, and 
gazing at the perishing member for a moment, he said, with tri- 
umph, ll I believe in the resurrection of the body!" Thus he 
trampled death under his feet, and Elijah-like, in a flaming 
chariot of glory, went shouting to his home in the skies. 

— Edit&r. 
SONG IN DYING. 

I'm fading away to the land of the blest, 

Like the last lingering hues of the even ; 
Reclining my head on my kind angel's breast, 

I soar to my own native heaven. 
My warfare is finished, the battle is won, 

To a crown and a throne I aspire ; 
My coursers are brighter than steeds of the sun ; 

I mount in a chariot of fire. 

The world is fast sinking away from my sight, 

A trifle appear all its treasures; 
I see them from hence by eternity's light — 

How vanish its pomp and its pleasures ! 
How faint are the notes of the trumpet of fame, 

Rehearsing its soul-flattering story ! 
How tarnished the lustre of each noble name: 

A meteor flash is its glory J 



240 THE DYING. 

Lo ! upward I gaze, and the glory supreme 
That illumines the heights of Elysian, 

Shines down through the veil — there is life in each beam- 
It renders immortal my vision. 

The notes of soft melody fall on my ear; 
Harmonious the cadence and measure; 

'Tis the voice of the harpers on Zion I hear; 
Full high swells their chorus of pleasure. 

Lo ! there are the towers of my fu :ure abode, 

The city on high and eternal ! 
See, there is the Eden — the river of God ! 

And the trees ever-bearing and vernal. 
Haste, haste with me onward, companion and guide, 

Let me join in that heavenly matin ; 
Fly wide, ye bright gates ! swiftly through them I ride, 

Triumphant o'er sin, death and Satan. — William Hunter, D. B 

FIDELITY IN THE FACE OF DEATH. 

True men are calm and faithful in the greatest trials and 
before the fiercest foes. Josephus records a case in point, the 
speech of Eleazar before the tyrant Antiochus. Said the in- 
trepid martyr : " Old age has not so impaired my mind or en- 
feebled my body but, when religion and duty call upon me, I 
feel a youthful and vigorous soul. Does this declaration awaken 
your resentment ? Prepare your instruments of torture, provoke 
the flames of the furnace to a fiercer rage; nothing shall induce 
me to save these silver'locks by a violation of the ordinances of 
my country and my God. Thou holy law ! from whom I derive 
my knowledge, I will never desert so excellent a master. Thou 
prime virtue, temperance ! I will never abjure thee. August and 
sacred priesthood ! I will never disgrace thee. I will bear it to 
my ancestors a pure and unsullied soul, as free from stain as I 
stand in this place devoid of fear, amid the parade of your 
threatening engines and implements of martyrdom." 

— E. L. Magoon. 

To every man upon this earth 

Death cometh soon or late ; 

And how can man die better 

Than facing fearful odds, 

For the ashes of his fathers 

And the temples of his gods ? — Lord Macau/ay. 



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SHAKES PEA RE— SHE R WEN— WISE—M' CAR TV. 

Cowards die many times before their deaths ; 

The valiant never taste of death but once. — Shakespeare. 



241 



FORTITUDE IN DEATH. 

In one of the bloody battles fought by the Duke d'Enghien, 
two French noblemen were left wounded among the dead on 
the field of battle. One complained loudly of his pains ; the 
other, after long silence, thus offered him consolation : " My 
friend, whoever you are, remember that our God died on the 
cross, our king on the scaffold; and if you have strength to look 
at him who now speaks to you, you will see that both his legs 
are shot away." 

At the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, the royal victim 
looking at the soldiers, who had pointed their fusees, said : 
" Grenadiers ! lower your guns, otherwise you will miss, or only 
wound me." To two of them, who proposed to tie a handker- 
chief over his eyes, he said : "A loyal soldier, who has been so 
often exposed to fire and sword, can see the approach of death 
with naked eyes and without fear." 

After a similar caution on the part of Sir George Lisle, or Sir 
Charles Lucas, when murdered in nearly the same manner as 
Colchester, by the soldiers of Fairfax, the loyal hero, in answer 
to their assertions and assurances that they would take care not 
to miss him, nobly replied : " You have often missed me when I 
have been nearer to you in the field of battle." 

When the governor of Cadiz, the Marquis de Solano, was 
murdered by the enraged and mistaken citizens, to one of his 
murderers, who had run a pike through his back, he calmly 
turned round and said : " Coward, to strike there ! Come round 
— if you dare face — and destroy me." — Dr. Sherwen. 

The pang of any violent death lies not in its mode, but in its 
cause. Innocence dignifies death. Guilt alone degrades the 
s u fife re r . — Daniel Wise. 

COURAGE IN DEATH. 

We must have faith in God, and live and endure all he says : 

u Come up higher." Do your work well ; and when the frail 
16 



242 THE DYING. 

bark of your life goes down, go with it to the bottom as God 
shall will, with the heart anchored to the throne by the strong 
faith of the gospel, and it shall be well with you. Go to your 
life-work with zeal, prosecute it with energy, and meet death 
when it comes with courage and faith. 

A beautiful illustration of manly courage, of Christian resig- 
nation and self-sacrifice, was that of the lamented Herndon, 
commander of the steamship " Central America," a few years 
ago. That noble vessel left Aspinwall for the port of New 
York with five hundred and seventy-five persons on board, in- 
cluding the crew. When some days out the ship sprung a 
leak, and all efforts to save her from sinking proved unavailing. 
The sea was heavy, the ship was crippled, every arm had worked 
at the pumps, and all this could not bring the vessel to land. 
Just then a small craft hove in sight. Signal-rockets went up 
every half hour, while the minute-guns sent their boomings of 
distress across the waters. The small vessel came to their aid 
as nearly as possible. Then the boats were lowered ; and first 
the women and children were taken off, and then the old men, 
until the small vessel could positively contain no more, and it 
became inevitable that many must go down with the ship. The 
captain decided to perish with his crew. He went into his 
state-room, put on his naval uniform, removed the covering 
from the gold band of his cap, took his stand at the wheel- 
house, grasped the iron railing with his left hand, uncovered 
his head in solemn reverence before God, and thus went into 
eternity. Here was grandeur of moral character; here was 
worth before which the world may pause. Such an end is en- 
nobling — it is inspiring. And such a close is but the concen- 
tration of a long life full of noble deeds into a few hours. Thus 
death brings out the meaning of life. It rounds our lives to a 
close, and is but the fragrance of cemented and compacted 
virtues.— Rev. J. H. McCarty, D. D. 

WAITING FOR THE ANGELIC CONVOY. 

Seldom is the serenely expectant spirit of the dying Chris- 
tian more graphically portrayed than in the beautiful letter of 



JOHN S. C. ABBOTT. 343 

Rev. J. S. C. Abbott, written shortly before his death to J. De- 
witt Miller, and published in 'the New York Methodist. It 
bears date at Fair Haven, Conn., March 3, 1877, and reads as 
follows : 

I am pillowed upon a sick and dying bed, with a little tablet 
in my hands. I can, without much difficulty, pencil lines to 
my friends. I suffer very little pain. My mind, it seems to me, 
was never more clear and joyous. The physicians assure me 
that I am liable at any moment to die. I am happy. I do not 
see how any one can be more happy out of heaven. I am ex- 
pecting every hour that a group of loving angels will come and 
say to me : " Brother, God has sent us to convey you to heaven 
— the chariot is waiting." All the infirmities of flesh and sin 
will vanish from body and soul. I shall be the congenial com- 
panion with the angels in that most wonderful of all conceivable 
journeys from earth to heaven. I have several times taken the 
tour of Europe. And there was great joy in seeing the wonders 
of the old world. But there were sorrows too, the discomforts 
of travel, the need of economy ; the mind burdened with those 
earthly cares which never upon earth can be laid aside. But 
when the angelic summons comes, I shall be an " heir of God." 
He will provide the chariot and will meet all the expenses. All 
care, imperfection, pain will be gone. The escort will be 
glorious, angels loving me with a brother's love, and God will 
have made me worthy of their love. We shall pass Sirius, the 
Pleiades, Orion and firmaments, or, as Herschel calls them, 
other universes of unimaginable splendor. And then we shall 
enter heaven ! All its glories will burst upon our enraptured 
view. Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim, will 
gather around us with their congratulations. We shall see God, 
his throne, the splendor of his court, understand all the mysteries 
of his being, and enter upon blessings inconceivable, forever 
and forever ! 

All this I believe, my dear friend, as fully as I believe in my 
own existence. And I may enter upon this enjoyment before 
night shall darken around me. In the religion of the Son of 
God, and in the atonement he has made for my many sins, I 



244 THE DYING. 

find all that my soul craves. I am indeed happy. But writ- 
ing these lines has exhausted me. I hope to meet you in 
heaven. There we will clasp hands and lovingly refer to this 
correspondence. Yours, affectionately, John S. C Abbott. 

ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 

I am dying, Egypt, dying. — Shakespeare. 

I am dying. Egypt, dying, 

Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast, 
And the dark Plutonian shadows 

Gather on the evening blast. 
Let thine arm, Oh ! queen, support me, 

Hush thy sobs and bow thine ear, 
Harken to the great heart secrets, 

Thou, and thou alone, must hear. 

Though my scarred and veteran legions 

Bear their eagles high no more, 
And my wrecked and scattered galleys 

Strew dark Actium's fatal shore ; 
Though no glittering guards surround me, 

Prompt to do their master's will, 
I must perish like a Roman, 

Die the great triumvir still. 

Let not Caesar's servile minions 

Mock the lion thus laid low ; 
'Twas no foeman's hand that slew him, 

'Twas his own that struck the blow ; 
Here, then, pillowed on thy bosom, 

Ere his star fades quite away, 
Him who drunk with thy caresses, 

Madly flung a world away. 

Should the base, plebeian rabble 

Dare assail my fame at Rome, 
Where the noble spouse, Octavia, 

Weeps within her widowed home, 
Seek her, say the gods have told me, 

Altars, augurs, circling wings, 
That her blood with mine commingled, 

Yet shall mount the throne of king*. 



GENERAL W. H. LYTLE. 245 

/nd for thee, star-eyed Egyptian! 

Glorious Sorceress of the Nile, 
Light the path to Stygian horrors 

With the splendors of thy smile. 
Give the Caesar crowns and arches, 

Let his brow the laurel twine, 
I can scorn the Senate's triumphs, 

Triumphing in love like thine. 

I am dying, Egypt, dying. 

Hark ! the insulting foeman's cry. 
They are coming — quick, my falchion ! 

Let me front them ere I die. 
Ah ! no more amid the battle 

Shall my heart exulting swell, 
Isis and Osiris guard thee, 

Cleopatra! Rome, farewell! — Gen. Wm. H. Lytle. 

DYING IN DESPAIR. 

The following certified incident from real life we select from 
•orrespondence of the Canada Christian Advocate : A man who 
had indulged the hope of final salvation, regardless of charac- 
ter, was on his death-bed. In the prime of life, his cup of 
pleasure drained to the dregs, and exhausted nature refused to 
recruit her wasted energies. Pale and wan, with an awful sense 
of an uncertain future, the horrors of remorse distracting his 
inmost soul, the bitter cup of despair persistently held to his 
lips by the unrelenting hand of an abused and now fully awak- 
ened conscience, his hope that all would finally be well with 
him was forever swept away. No hope; no trust in God; his 
bed was no bed of roses, although surrounded by every comfort 
wealth could furnish. 

With the dread realities of eternity before his eyes, he cried : 
"Oh! I can't die; there is no mercy now for me; God can't 
forgive me now. Oh ! how I wish I had lived differently ; if I 
could only live, I would lead a different life." I encouraged 
him to hope in the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, and earnestly 
besought him to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ with all his 
heart, and he should be saved. " Do you think that God will 
forgive me for Christ's sake, such a sinner as I have been ? " 



246 



THE DYING. 



" Yes ; oh ! yes," said I ; "he came to seek and save just such 
ones as you ; be willing to have him save you now, just as you 
are." " Oh ! no," said he, " it is too late now," while the tears 
streamed down his young face, pallid with disease and suffering. 
I had never witnessed such a scene before, and I never shall 
forget the awful expression of that dying sinner's face to my 
dying breath. 

I told him I would pray for him, and that he must pray 
for himself, and left the room ere my senses forsook me. 
Horror-stricken almost, and with a feeling as if death's fingers 
were clutching at my own heart-strings, I could not bear to wit- 
ness such fearful despair. I went down the stairs, and soon one 
of his spasms of pain came on ; and unable to bear it, with no 
hope, no peace, no Jesus to sustain him, he gave way to the 
fiends, as it seemed to me, which possessed him. 

With fearful curses, frightful imprecations, and horrid oaths, 
he drove his faithful wife from the room, and he lay there alone 
to battle with the raging hand of disease, cursing God, and 
screaming with rage and pain, so that he could be heard in the 
neighboring houses. I could do nothing for him, and the curses 
and maledictions of that hour ring in my ears like the wail of 
the lost in the dark regions of despair. And soon I heard he 
was dead. Gone to the bar of God, to render up his account 
at the judgment. 

God save us from such a passing away as that ; torturing 
fiends instead of soothing angels round his dying couch. Black 
despair in lieu of the overshadowing wing of angelic hope. 
Death and the judgment staring him in the face, instead of 
peace in believing and joy in the Holy Ghost. Horrid blas- 
phemies instead of, " Oh ! death, where is thy sting ? oh ! grave, 
where is thy victory?" A fearful looking forward to the future 
in lieu of, " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and because he 
lives, I shall live also." Too late, too late, instead of " Come, 
Lord Jesus, come quickly." Such is the fearful end of those 
who trust in the mercy of God out of Christ, for " God out of 
Christ is a consuming fire." 



ANDERSON. 247 

MOTHER, I'M TIRED. 

Mother, I'm tired, and I would fain be sleeping, 

Let me repose upon thy bosom seek ; 
But promise me that thou wilt leave off weeping, 

Because thy tears fall hot upon my cheek. 
Here it is cold ; the tempest raveth madly ; 

But in my dreams all is so wondrous bright : 
I see the angel children smiling gladly, 

When from my weary eyes I shut the light. 

Mother, one steals beside me now ! And listen: 

Dost thou not hear the music's sweet accord ? 
See how his white wings beautifully glisten : 

Surely those wings were given him by our Lord : 
Green, gold, and red are floating all around me ; 

They are the flowers the angel scattereth : 
Shall I have also wings whilst life hast bound me ? 

Or, mother, are they given alone in death ? 

Why dost thou clasp me as if I were going ? 

Why dost thou press thy cheek thus unto mine ? 
Thy cheek is hot, and still thy tears are flowing : 

I will, dear mother, will be always thine ! 
Do not sigh thus ! it marreth my reposing ; 

And if thou weep, then I must weep with thee. 
Oh, I am tired ; my weary eyes are closing : 

Look, mother, look ! the angel kisseth me. 

From the Danish of Anderson. 

THE DYING NEWS-BOY. 

In a dark alley in the great city of New York, a small, ragged 
boy might be seen. He appeared to be about twelve years old, 
and had a careworn expression on his countenance. The cold 
air seemed to have no pity as it pierced through his ragged 
clothes, and made the flesh beneath blue and almost frozen. 

This poor boy had once a happy home. His parents died a 
year before, and left him without money or friends. He was 
compelled to face the cold, cruel world with but a few cents in his 
pocket. He tried to earn his living by selling newspapers and 
other such things. This day everything seemed to go against 
him, and in despair he threw himself down in the dark alley, 



248 



THE DYING. 



with his papers by his side. A few boys gathered around the 
poor lad, and one asked, in a kind way (for a street Arab), 
" Say, Johnny, why don't you go to the lodges ? " (The lodge was 
a place where almost all the boys stayed at night, costing but a 
few cents.) But the poor little lad could only murmur that he 
could not stir, and called the boys about him, saying : " I am 
dying now, because I feel so queer ; and I can hardly see you. 
Gather around me closer, boys. I cannot talk so loud. I can 
kinder see the angels holding out their hands for me to come 
to that beautiful place they call heaven. Good-bye, boys. 
I am to meet father and mother." And, with these last words 
on his lips, the poor boy died. 

Next morning the passers-by saw a sight that would soften 
the most hardened heart. There lying on the cold stone, with 
his head against the hard wall, and his eyes staring upward, was 
the poor little frozen form of the newsboy. He was taken to the 
church near by, and was interred by kind hands. And those 
who performed this act will never forget the poor forsaken lad 

THE DYING BABE. 

(The following extract from an anonymous contribution to the New York Methodist tells a story 
which many parents could adopt as their own. Few will read it without tears. — Editor?) 

All that morning I held the baby in my arms — all that long 
and weary morning. How hot was that little cheek ! how 
piteous the moaning ! how feeble the cry ! how restless ! Oh ! 
how sick was my little child ! How hard to see it suffer, hour 
after hour, yet not be able to relieve it ! My eyes grew dim 
with tears, and I could only faintly pray : 

" God, be merciful, and spare, oh ! spare my little, my darling 
little babe." 

In vain ! in vain ! Again the doctor came, and then he 
spoke kindly; but we knew there was a depth of meaning in 
his words. 

" Your child is very, very sick." 

Then turning to my husband, he added : 

" You had better not go down to the store this morning." 

Neither John nor I dared ask him any questions, for we felt 



ANONYMOUS. 249 

there was something in his tone which bade us hope no longer. 
Something as sad to us as the tolling of the funeral-bell. 

"John," I said, after the doctor had left, "bring the baby to 
me." 

Tenderly he raised it up and placed it in my lap, and silently 
we watched the flame of life decreasing. No words were spoken. 
The measured ticking of the clock and the restless breathing of 
the baby alone were heard. An hour — it seemed an hour — 
passed away. I gazed upon the face of Willie ; the eyes were 
fixed, the cheek was pale, and the breathing, how quick and 
short it was ! Never had I seen a child so sick before ; but I 
knew — I knew — the dread change was coming. 

"O John! our darling babe is dying." 

" Mary," this was all John said, " Mary, the will of God be 
done." 

" Yes, yes, dear husband," I could hardly speak for weeping ; 
" but it is so hard, so very, very hard, to lose a little child." 

No more was said ; but we wept together. We saw the eyes 
gently close and open, and close again ; the breath came quicker 
and quicker ; then — then — more and more slowly — the little 
stream of life was ebbing fast away. 

Friends came into the room, but I heeded them not. Then 
some one gently touched me, and said, " Mary." I knew the 
voice. 

" O mother! you have come. Willie is dying." 

I can dwell no longer on that scene. Two days after, and 
John said : 

" In an hour the funeral services will take place. Let us take 
our last look at the child we loved while we are alone together." 

We drew near the coffin. There was the little face we had 
learned to love; but oh! the eyes were closed, the voice was 
hushed. There lay the child so still and quiet, the hands to- 
gether, and a wreath of pure white flowers beside them. I kissed 
the cold face : 

" O Willie ! farewell — farewell — forever." 

" No, Mary, not forever," said John; "there is another and a 
better life." 



250 



THE DYING. 



Then came the solemn funeral services, the journey to the 
cemetery, the open grave, and all was over. John and I came 
back to our sad and silent cottage on the hill. 

Only a few weeks ago it was that we visited the grave of 
Willie. We walked through the entrance of Greenwood, along 
the hard, smooth road to the hillside, near the quiet lake, and 
there, under the shadow of a wide-branching tree, we stood 
beside the little mound of earth. I gazed upon the monument 
which had just been placed there, with a rose-bud on a broken 
stem, engraved upon it the name of our lost child, the date of 
birth and death, and then the words, " Safe in the Shepherd's 
arms." 

We gazed and wept ; and at last John said : 

" Mary, life is short. Here beside this grave let us resolve so 
to live that we shall meet our little one in our true home in 
heaven." 

There beside that grave we made the solemn vow, and we 
shall try to keep it. 

I know that I am weak and nervous. As I go to and fro in 
the daily work of the house, I grieve for the babe that has gone, 
for I miss it very much. Be patient, oh, my sorrowing spirit ! 
be patient ! I think it will not be long — though I dare not tell 
my husband so — before I shall sleep quietly beside my little 
babe; not long before I shall meet that gentle spirit in the skies. 

THE PAUPER'S DEATH. 

Tread softly — bow the head- 
In reverent silence bow, 

No passing bell doth toll, 

Yet an immortal soul 
Is passing now. 

Stranger ! however great, 

With lowly reverence bow ; 
There's one in that poor shed — ■ 
One by that paltry bed — 

Greater than thou. 

Beneath that beggar's roof, 

Lo ! Death doth keep his state. 
Enter, no crowds attend ; 
Enter, no guards defend 

This palace gate. 



CAROLINE BOWLES. 251 

That pavement, damp and cold, 

No smiling courtiers tread; 
One silent woman stands, 
Lifting with meagre hands 

A dying head. 

No mingling voices sound — 

An infant wail alone ; 
A sob suppressed — again 
That short deep gasp, and then — 

The parting groan. 

Oh, change ! stupendous change ! 

There lies the soulless clod ; 
The sun eternal breaks, 
The new immortal wakes — 

Wakes with his God. — Caroline Bowles. 



THE BEST TIME. 

A very dear only daughter lay dying. She had been a 
thoughtful, praying child, having professed religion at twelve 
^ears of age and lived a devoted and useful life. Now she was 
only waiting a few hours to go home. Severe pain at times 
almost took away the power of thought. Between these severe 
attacks of suffering she looked back on her childhood's experi- 
ences and forward into the blessed future with equal clearness 
and joy, as she said, " There's a beautiful clearness now." As 
I sat by her bed, we talked as her strength would permit. 
Among the many things never to be forgotten she said, 
" Father, you know I professed religion when I was young, very 
young — some thought too young ; but, oh, how I wish I could 
tell everybody what a comfort it is to me now to think of it ! " 
Reaching out her hand — the fingers already cold — and grasping 
mine, she said, with great earnestness, " Father, you are at work 
for the young. Do all you can for them while they are young. 
It is the best time — the best time. Oh, I see it now as I never did 
before. It is the best time while they are young — the youngef 
the better. Do all you can for them while they are very 
young." — Children's Friend. 



252 



THE DYING. 

" GOD KNOWS." 

Oh, wild and dark was the winter night 

When the emigrant ship went down, 
But just outside of the harbor bar, 

In the sight of the startled town ! 
The winds howled and the sea roared, 

And never a soul could sleep, 
Save the little ones on their mothers' breasts, 

Too young to watch and weep. 

No boat could live in the angry surf, 

No rope could reach the land ; 
There were bold, brave hearts upon the shore. 

There was many a ready hand : 
Women who prayed and men who strove 

When prayers and work were vain — 
For the sun rose over the awful void 

And the silence of the main! 

All day the watchers paced the sands — 

All day they scanned the deep; 
All night the booming minute-guns 

Echoed from steep to steep. 
"Give up the dead, oh, cruel sea!" 

They cried athwart the space: 
But only a baby's fragile form 

Escaped from its stern embrace! 

Only one little child of all 

Who with the ship went down 
That night, when the happy babies slept 

So warm in the sheltered town! 
Wrapped in the glow of the morning light, 

It lay on the shifting sand, 
As fair as a sculptor's marble dream, 

With a shell in its dimpled hand. 

There were none to tell of its race or kin ; 

" God knoweth," the pastor said, 
When the sobbing children crowded to ask 

The name of the baby dead. 
And so when they laid it away at last 

In the churchyard's hushed repose, 
They raised a stone at the baby's head 

With the carven words, " God knows." — St. Nicholas. 




Showing the condition of the body and state of the soul after death, 
various funeral customs, habits of mourning, and coun- 
sels and consolations for the sorrowing. 

[253] 



"There the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary 
be at rest. There the prisoners rest together; they hear 
not the voice of the oppressor. The small and great are 
there; and the servant is free from his master. Wherefore 
is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bit- 
ter in soul; which long for death, but it eometh not; and 
dig for it more than for hid treasures; which rejoice 
exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave." 
-Job iii. 17-22. 

" The dead are like the stars, by day 
Withdrawn from mortal eye, 
But not extinct, they hold their way 

In glory through the sky : 
Spirits from bondage thus set free ? 
Vanish amidst immensity ; 
Where human thought, like human sight, 
Fails to pursue their trackless flight." 

—Montgomery. 



(*54) 




CHAPTER I.— THE BODY AFTER DEATH. 

DEAD. 

HIS is what has been said of all the long line of mortality 
that has gone down to the grave. It is the verdict of 
each coming generation, upon the one going before it, 
which, in its turn, will be the subject of the same sol- 
emn announcement. Burdened with sadness, yet oft- 
repeated ; often repeated, yet ever true. True of the long line 
of generations, and also true of each person composing these 
generations. 

Reader, you, too, are a dying mortal. The end is near. How 
very near the time when your bodily strength will depart; when 
your palsied limbs can no longer obey the will ; when your head 
will be so heavy and tired that you can no longer lift it up ; 
when your panting, parting breath will fail, and with a struggle 
and a gasp, be gone ; when the feeble, fitful life-current will for- 
get its flow, and your throbbing heart will cease to beat ; when 
your closed and sightless eyes will look no more on earthly 
sights and earthly scenes ; when your ears will be alike deaf to 
the harsh voice of censure and the tender accents of affection ; 
when your voice will be forever hushed in the stillness of the 
grave; when your body, now the object of much care and solici- 
tude, will be lifeless and loathsome ; when a coffin shall inclose 
it, and a silent procession bear it to the grave ; when weeping 
friends can no longer be with you, but will turn away and leave 
you to the chill and coldness, the damp and darkness, the soli- 
tude and silence of your cheerless bed, in the narrow chambers 
of death; when "he is dead," will be the brief, solemn announce- 
ment that will tell the sad tale of another earthly life gone out, 
another broken home-circle, another vacant chair, and another 
desolate hearth-stone 1 * 

(255) 



2^6 THE DEAD. 

THE BODY ONLY THE TEMPLE OF THE SOUL. 

As much as I have loved this body, I must leave it to the 
grave. There must it lie and rot in darkness, as a neglected 
and loathsome thing. This is the fruit of sin, and nature would 
not have it so. But it is only my shell, my tabernacle, my 
clothing, and not my soul itself. It is only a dissolution ; earth 
to earth, water to water, air to air, and fire to fire. It is but an 
instrument laid by, when all its work is done; a servant dis- 
missed when his service is ended : as I cast by my lute, when I 
have better employment. It is but as flowers die in autumn, 
and plants in winter. It is but a separation from a troublesome 
companion, and putting off a shoe that pinched me. Many a 
sad and painful hour, many a weary night and day, have I had. 
What cares and fears, what griefs and groans has this body cost 
me ? Alas ! how much of my precious time has been spent to 
maintain, please, or repair it. Often have I thought that it cost 
me so dear to live, yea, to live a painful, weary life, that were it 
not for the higher ends of life, I had little reason to be much in 
love with it, or be loth to leave it. To depart from such a body 
is but to remove from a sordid habitation. I know it is the 
curious, wonderful work of God, and not to be despised, or 
unjustly dishonored, but admired and well used; yet our reason 
wonders that so noble a spirit should be so meanly housed, for 
we must call it " our vile body." To depart from such a body 
is but to be loosed " from the bondage of corruption," from the 
clog and prison of the soul. That body, which was a fit servant 
to the soul of innocent man, is now become a prison. 

— Richard Baxter, D. D. 

SEPARATION OF THE SOUL AND THE BODY. 

If death may not be scientifically defined as the separation 
of the soul from the body, yet, in the last analysis, this is 
implied. 

Assuming that man has a dual nature — a soul as well as a 
body — our common sense tells us that the partnership is dis- 
solved in the article of death. With philosophical reasonings 
and speculations as to the post-mortem state of the soul, we have 




THE ENTOMBMENT. 

And the women also, which came with Him from Galilee, followed alter, 
and beheld the sepulchre, and how His body was laid. — Luke xxiii. 55. 



SUMMERS— DICKENS. 



25; 



here nothing to do. Some think Paul, in 2 Cor. v., intimates 
that the soul will be invested with a celestial vehicle in the in- 
termediate state, but this speculation has no solid ground. 

— T. 0. Summers, D. D. 

CHANGE OF COUNTENANCE AFTER DEATH. 

Alas ! how few of nature's faces are left to gladden us with 
their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings of the 
world change them as they change hearts ; and it is only when 
those passions sleep, and have lost their hold forever, that the 
troubled clouds pass off, and leave heaven's surface clear. It is 
a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that 
fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expres- 
sion of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early 
life ; so calm, so peaceful do they grow again, that those who 
knew them in their happy childhood kneel by the coffin's side 
in awe, and see the angel even upon earth. — Dickens. 

DISINTEGRATION OF THE BODY. 

By observation we see that the cadaver — the body separated 
from the soul — is subjected to disintegration. It is so offensive 
that we have to bury our dead out of our sight, or dispose of 
the bodies by embalming, cremation, or some other process. 

The fourteen elements of which our physical structure is 
composed are disunited — there being no vital vinculum to keep 
them together ; and they become blended with the oxygen, hy- 
drogen, and other kindred elements in the world around. What 
took place during life, in the perpetual flux of the body — then 
with replacement of the elements eliminated — now takes place 
totally, with no replacement. With the exception of some mum- 
mies — in which, indeed, molecular changes have taken place — 
the millions of bodies which were animated like ours, and which 
for millenniums have been laid in the grave, are as undistin- 
guishable as those of the inferior animals, or the vegetals which 
have flourished for a while, and then perished forever! 

T. 0. Summers, D. D. 
17 



26o THE DEAD. 

ance, how entirely their thoughts were absorbed by the melan- 
choly event that had befallen them. But they did not cut 
themselves in token of grief; and the command given to the 
Israelites, " Ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness 
between your eyes for the dead," does not refer to a custom of 
the Egyptians, but of those people among whom they were 
about to establish themselves in Syria — as is distinctly stated of 
the votaries of Baal. 

The body having been embalmed, was restored to the family, 
either already placed in the mummy case, or merely wrapped in 
bandages, if we may believe Herodotus, who says that the 
friends of the deceased made the coffin ; though from the 
paintings in the tombs, it would appear that the body was fre- 
quently enveloped and put into the case by the undertakers, 
previous to its being returned to the family. After it had been 
deposited in the case, which was generally enclosed in two or 
three others, all richly painted, according to the expense they 
were pleased to incur, it was placed in a room of the house, up- 
right against the wall, until the tomb was ready, and all the 
necessary preparations had been made for the funeral. The 
coffin or mummy case was then carried forth, and deposited in 
the hearse, drawn upon a sledge to the sacred lake of the nome y 
notice having been previously given to the judges, and a public 
announcement made of the appointed day. Forty-two judges 
having been summoned, and placed in a semi-circle near the 
banks of the lake, a boat was brought up, provided expressly for 
the occasion. 

When the boat was ready for the reception of the coffin, it 
was lawful for any person who thought proper to bring for- 
ward his accusation against the deceased. If it could be proved 
that he had led an evil life, the judges declared accordingly, 
and the body was deprived of the accustomed sepulture; but if 
the accuser failed to establish what he advanced, he was subject 
to the heaviest penalties. When there was no accuser, or when 
the accusation had been disproved, the relations ceased from 
their lamentations, and pronounced encomiums on the deceased. 
They did not enlarge upon his descent, as is usual among the 



WILKINSON— POTTS. 2 6l 

Greeks, for they hold that all the Egyptians are equally noble; 
but they related his early education and the course of his 
studies, and then praising his piety and justice in manhood, his 
temperance, and the other virtues he possessed, they suppli- 
cated the gods below to receive him as a companion of the 
pious. This announcement was received by the assembled 
multitude with acclamations ; and they joined in extolling the 
glory of the deceased, who was about to remain forever with 
the virtuous in the regions of Hades. The body was then taken 
by those who had family catacombs already prepared, and placed 
in the repository allotted to it, or having no catacombs, some 
constructed a new apartment in their own house for the purpose. 
— Sir I. Gardner Wilkinson, D. C. L. y F. R. S., etc. 

ANCIENT JEWISH FUNERAL CUSTOMS. 

Ancient Jews insisted on the burial of dead bodies. Crema- 
tion, or non-burial by neglect, was alike shocking. In the 
earlier and simpler age the act of interment was performed by 
near relatives. Thus Isaac and Ishmael buried their father 
Abraham with their own hands, and when Isaac died, Jacob and 
Esau buried him. In later times, however, this duty devolved 
by custom upon others. When there was no embalming of 
the body, interment generally followed within twenty-four hours 
after death. Ananias and Sapphira were buried immediately 
after expiring. This custom has not altogether ceased yet in 
Eastern countries. 

The more common mode of carrying a corpse to the grave 
was on a bier or bed, the body concealed from public gaze by a 
coverlid. Instance the son of the widow of Nain. Persons of 
distinction had coffins of wood, stone, or pasteboard, " on which, 
as additional marks of honor, were placed their insignia; if a 
prince, his crown; if a warrior, his armor; if a rabbi, his books." 

The nearest relatives kept close by the remains, and, if the 
expense could be borne, hired mourners accompanied them, and 
" by every now and then lifting the covering and exposing the 
corpse, gave the signal to the company to renew their cries of 
iamentation." 



262 THE DEAD. 

Thus it Jvas when Jacob was buried. When the procession 
reached the site of the sepulchre, they halted seven days, and, 
under the guidance of the mourning attendants, indulged in 
violent paroxysms of grief. St. Mark characterized a similar 
scene in his time as a "tumult." 

It was customary for a few weeks after Jewish burials for 
members of the family to pay frequent visits to the tomb. Hence 
it was said, as a matter of course, when Lazarus was buried, 
and Mary arose to meet her Lord : " She goeth to the grave to 
weep there." — Editor. 

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY UPON BURIAL CUSTOMS. 

As Christianity in its general influence did not tend to sup- 
press, but only to ennoble the natural feelings of man ; as it 
is opposed itself generally, as well to the perverted education 
which would crush these natural feelings, as to the unrestrained 
expression of them in the rude state of nature ; the same was 
its influence also in relation to mourning for the dead. From 
the first, Christianity condemned the wild, and at the same time 
hypocritical, expressions of grief with which the funeral pro- 
cession was accompanied, those wailings of women who had 
been hired for the occasion (mulieres prceficce), yet it required 
no stoic resignation and apathy, but mitigated and refined the 
anguish of sorrow by the spirit of faith and hope, and of child- 
like resignation to that eternal love, which takes, in order to 
restore what it has taken under a more glorious form ; which 
separates for the moment, in order to reunite the separated in 
a glorified state through eternity. . . . Out of this direction 
of the feelings arose the Christian custom which required that 
the memory of departed friends should be celebrated by their 
relations, husbands, or wives, on the anniversary of their death, 
in a manner suited to the spirit of the Christian faith and of the 
Christian hope. — Augustus Neander, D. D. 

EULOGIZING THE DEAD. 

In the matter of eulogizing the dead, — that is certainly carried 
to an extreme at present. In many of our funeral addresses, it 



RE ID— WISE— ED D V. 



263 



is difficult for a hearer to ascertain whether any distinction is 
made between the righteous and the wicked, — all are good at 
death. With reference to most men who disappear from the 
stage of life, it is best to say nothing. The Bible is remarkable 
for its silence respecting the dead ; remarkable that it praises 
men so little, whether living or dead. Adam and Eve died, but 
nothing is mentioned respecting their fate. Even the wisest 
king of Israel enters eternity with a cloud around him. The 
greatest prophets and priests died, but we read of no eulogies 
being pronounced over their remains. There is no reference to 
a funeral sermon in any part of the Divine Writings. There 
are times when to us it would seem proper to preach, — as when 
John and Stephen died, — but a significant silence is all that 
speaks to the soul. An approach to the Bible method would 
be an improvement. A simple prayer offered up to the great 
Searcher and Strengthener of hearts, and a few words of counsel 
addressed to living men, are all that is requisite when one 
dies. — Rev. John Reid. 

Possibly our own senseless custom of inviting promiscuous 
audiences at funerals to look at deceased persons may have come 
down to us from the middle ages. Whatever its origin, it is in 
very bad taste, and would be more honored by its breach than 
by its observance. — Daniel Wise, D. D. 

CHRISTIANITY CAN DO YET MORE FOR US. 

Not enough has Christianity been permitted to do for us in 
mitigating the horrors of death. Too much do we yet symbol 
it by broken columns, inverted flames, and drooping boughs — 
emblems of mere reason rather than of faith, which teaches us 
that, with the Christian, the column has been completed, the 

" Fire ascending " 

has reached the sun, and that the "tree of life," and the "tree 
of knowledge," rather than willow sad with pendent bough, are 
emblems of him who " dies in the Lord." Familiar as we are 



264 THE DEAD. 

with poetry, we are yet almost unacquainted with the spirit of 
our own hymn : 

" Weep not for a brother deceased; 

Our loss is his infinite gain ; 
A soul out of prison released, 

And freed from his bodily chain : 
With songs let us follow his flight, 

And mount with his spirit above, 
Escaped to the mansions of light, 

And lodged in the Eden of love."— T. M. Eddy, D.D. 

THE DIRGE. 

What is the existence of man's life, 
But open war, or slumbered strife ? 
Where sickness to his sense presents 
The combat of the elements ; 
And never feels a perfect peace, 
Till death's cold hand signs his release. 

It is a storm where the hot blood 
Outvies in rage the boiling flood; 
And each loud passion of the mind 
Is like a furious gust of wind, 
Which bears his bark with many a wave, 
Till he casts anchor in the grave. 

It is a flower which buds and grows 
And withers as the leaves disclose ; 
Whose spring and fall faint seasons keep, 
Like fits of waking before sleep ; 
Then shrinks into that fatal mould 
Where its first being was enrolled. 

It is a dream whose seeming truth 
Is moralized in age and youth ; 
Where all the comforts he can share 
As wandering as his fancies are; 
Till in the mist of dark decay 
The dreamer vanish quite away. 

It is a dial which points oijt 
The sunset as it moves about ; 
And shadows out in lines of night 
The subtle stages of time's flight, 
Till all-obscuring earth hath laid 
The body in perpetual shade. 



KING— ELIOT— LOWELL. 265 

It is a weary interlude, 

Which doth short joys, long woes include; 

The world the stage, the prologue tears, 

The acts vain hopes and varied fears ; 

The scene shuts up with loss of breath, 

And leaves no epilogue but death. — Henry King. 



THE DESOLATION. 

How lonely and desolate is the house where bereavement has 
come ! How heavy are the hearts of those who continue to do 
their appointed duties, which have now become a task-work, 
from which the relish has gone ! How dreary is the path of 
life, with its miserable routine of cares, its childish toys and 
playthings, its amusements and its follies, to those who have 
looked upon the angel of death, and who have stood by the open 
grave ! It is not that they would complain, but that they are 
bereaved. Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be 
comforted because they are not. Every family has its vacant 
seats at the fireside ; every heart at times seeks for those who 
are living, in the places of the dead. We cannot stop the pains 
of bereavement ; our dearest love cannot hold back those whom 
God calleth ; and while we mourn for the departed, trembling 
mixes with our love for those who remain. — William G. Eliot. 

AFTER THE BURIAL OF A DAUGHTER. 

Yes, faith is a goodly anchor, 

Where skies are as sweet as a psalm, 
At the bows it lolls so stalwart, 

In bluff broad-shouldered calm. 

And when o'er breakers to leeward 

The scattered surges are hurled, 
It may keep our head to the tempest* 

With its grip on the base of the world. 

But after the shipwreck, tell me 

What help in its iron thews, 
Still true to the broken hawser, 

Deep down among seaweed and ooze? 



266 THE DEAD, 

In the breaking gulfs of sorrow, 

When the helpless feet stretch out, 
And you find in the deeps of darkness 

No footing so solid as doubt — 

Then better one spar of memory ; 

One broken plank of the past — 
That our poor hearts may cling to, 

Tho' hopeless of shore at last. 

To the spirit its splendid conjectures, 

To the heart its sweet despair, 
Its tears on the thin worn locket, 

With its beauty of deathless hair. 

Immortal ! I feel it, and know it ; 

Who doubts it of such as she ! 
But that's the pang's very secret 

Immortal away from me. 

There is a little ridge in the churchyard, 
'Twould scarce stay a child in its race, 

But to me and my thoughts 'tis wider 
Than the star-sown vague of space. 

Your logic, my friend, is perfect ; 

Your moral most drearily true ; 
But the earth that stops my darling's ears 

Makes mine insensate, too. 

Console if you will, I can bear it, 

'Tis a well-meant alms of breath; 
But not all the preaching since Adam 

Has made death other than death. 

Communion in spirit ! Forgive me, 

But I who am sickly and weak 
Would give all my income from dreamland 

For her rose-leaf palm on my cheek. 

That little shoe in the corner, 

So worn and wrinkled and brown, 
Its motionless hollow confronts you, 

And argues your wisdom down. — James Russell Leutcll. 



JOSEPH PARKER. Z 6y 

THE RELIEF OF TEARS. 

Consecration to God's purposes does not eradicate ouf deep 
human love ; say, rather, that it heightens, refines, sanctifies it ! 
Every father is more a father in proportion as he loves and 
serves the great Father in heaven. We should be on our guard 
against any system of religion or philosophy that seeks to cool 
the fervor of natural and lawful love. It may be very majestic 
not to shed tears ; but it is most inhuman, most ungodly. We 
have heard of Abraham mourning, of David crying bitterly, of 
the Saviour allowing his feet to be washed with a sinner's tears, 
and of Jesus Christ weeping ; but who ever heard of the devil 
being broken down in pity or mournfulness ? Christianity edu- 
cates our humanity, not deadens it ; and when we are in tears, it 
enables us to see through them nearly into heaven. 

— Joseph Parker. 
AFTER THE FUNERAL. 

Of all returnings, that one, "after the funeral," is the saddest. 
Who will say it is not so that has ever followed a beloved one 
to the grave? While he was sick, we went in and out, anxiously 
sorrowing, suffering. The solicitude to relieve, and care for, 
and comfort him, engrossed us ; the fear of losing him excited 
and agonized us ; the apprehension of our own desolation, in 
case he should be removed from us, almost drove us wild. 

While he lay dead beneath the home roof, there was hurry 
and bustle in preparation for the funeral rites. Friends are sent 
for, neighbors are present, the funeral arrangements are dis- 
cussed, and mourning procured, the hospitalities of the house 
provided for ; all is excitement ; the loss is not perceived in its 
greatness. But, " after the funeral," after the bustle has all sub- 
sided, and things begin to move as usual, then it is we begin to 
know what has befallen us. The house seems still and sepul- 
chral, though in the heart of the city; and though its threshold 
be still trodden by friendly feet, it is as if empty. The apart- 
ments, how deserted ! especially the room where he struggled 
and surrendered in the last conflict. There are his clothes, 
there his books, there his hat and cane, there his ever-vacant 
seat at the family board. During his sickness we had not so 



268 THE DEAD. 

much noticed these things, for we hoped ever that he might use 
or occupy them again. But now we know it cannot be, and we 
perceive the dreadful vacuity everywhere. 

Oh, how dark and cheerless the night shadows come down 
after the funeral ! No moon or stars ever shone so dimly ; no 
darkness ever seemed so utterly dark. The tickings of the 
clock resound like bell-strokes all over the house. Such deep 
silence ! no footsteps now on the stairs or overhead, in the sick- 
chamber ; no nurse or watchers to come and say, " He is not so 
well, and asks for you." No, indeed, you may " sleep on now 
and take your rest," if you can. Ah, poor bereaved heart! it 
will be long before the sweet rest you once knew will revisit 
your couch. Slumber will bring again the scenes through which 
you just passed, and you will start from it but to find them all 
too real. God pity the mourner " after the funeral." 

— Anonymous. 
THE FIELDS OF THE DEAD. 

The practice of gathering the bodies of the dead into places 
of common burial is an ancient custom. Spacious sepulchres in 
early times were occupied by whole families in their genera- 
tions, and sometimes by a whole tribe or people. But the first 
burial-ground that we read of, bearing much resemblance to the 
modern cemetery, was that already mentioned in Egypt. Allow- 
ing much for fable, it is represented to have been situated on a 
lake called Acherusia, near Memphis. It was a spacious plain 
with a sandy surface, but at a slight depth composed of solid 
rock. It was surrounded by groves, and intersected by artificial 
water-courses, whose borders were verdant, and enamelled with 
aromatic flowering shrubs. It was called elisout, or elisiceus, 
signifying rest. From this might have been borrowed the poetic 
elysium of Homer, and other pagan writers. In its details this 
description may be fabulous ; it certainly reappears in this form 
in the Greek mythology ; but it seems the Egyptians had one 
or more field cemeteries, somewhat resembling those of later 
times. 

The most noted of modern cemeteries is at Paris. Its site is 
a general ascent, facing the city on the northwest. It is very 



BISHOP L. L. HAMLINE. 



269 



spacious. The beauty of the ground and the splendor of its 
ornaments are spoken of with great admiration. Intermingled 
with the choice and trained productions of the soil are monu- 
mental columns of every form. Obelisks, pyramids, funeral 
vases and choice statuary, some chaste and suited to the sol- 
emnities of the grave, and some outraging all the principles of 
taste, seem to crowd these fields of death. 

But why dwell longer in meditation among the tombs? 
Death lives not merely in history. A hundred and fifty genera- 
tions are his victims; but living and coming generations are 
under doom to the same relentless power. To live is to die. 
The grave is not full ; and all over the earth its fresh monuments 
of conquest are glittering in the moonlight and whitening in the 
sun. — Bishop Leonidas L. Hamline, D. D. 

NUMBER OF THE DEAD. 

Number the grains of sand outspread 

Wherever ocean's billows flow ; 
Or count the bright stars overhead, 

As these in their proud courses glow ; 

Count all the tribes on earth that creep, 

Or that expand the wing in air ; 
Number the hosts that in the deep 

Existence and its pleasures share ; 

Count the green leaves that in the breath 
Of spring's blithe gale are dancmg fast, 

Or those, all faded, sere in death, 
Which flit before the wintry blast ; 

Ay ! number these, and myriads more, 

All countless as they seem to be ; 
There still remains an ampler store 

Untold by, and unknown of thee. 

Askest thou, " Who, or what are they ? " 

Oh ! think upon thy mortal doom ; 
And with anointed eye survey 

The silent empire of the tomb ! 



57c THE DEAD. 

Think of all those who erst have been 

Living as thou art — even now ; 
Looking upon life's busy scene 

With glance as careless, light, as thou. 

All these, like thee, have lived and moved, 
Have seen — what now thou look'st upon, 

Have feared, hoped, hated, mourned, or loveo, 
And now from mortal sight are gone. 

Yet though unseen of human eye, 

Their relics slumber in the earth, 
The boon of immortality 

To them was given with vital birth. 

They were ; and, having been, they are ! 

Earth but contains their mouldering dust; 
Their deathless spirits, near or far, 

With thine must rise to meet the just. 

Thou know'st not but they hover near, 

Witness of every secret deed, 
Which, shunning human eye or ear, 

The spirits of the dead may heed. 

An awful thought it is to think 

The viewless dead outnumber all 
Who, bound by life's connecting link, 

Now share with us this earthly ball. 

It is a thought as dread and high, 

And one to wake a fearful thrill, 
To think, while all who live must die, 

The dead, the dead are living still. — Anonymous. 

ROOM FOR THE DEAD. 

Did you ever take your pencil and estimate how many human 
beings a single star or planet might support ? If you will do 
so, you will find that there is one of our planets that would sup- 
port upon its bosom all the inhabitants that have ever lived 
upon the earth in its historic six thousand years. With a popu- 
lation only as dense as that of France, our largest planet would 
furnish homes for all the beings that have ever lived on our 
small but beautiful star. But what is one planet to the millions 



PROF. DAVID SWING. 27 1 

of worlds that deck the sky? Earth is the humblest of stars. 
Oh, man ! God's universe has as much room for his children 
all living, as for his children all dead; as much room for their 
life and love and joy as for their dust. — Prof. David Swing. 

A MOTHER'S GRAVE. 

Earth has some sacred spots where we feel like loosening the 
shoes from our feet and treading with holy reverence ; where 
common words of pleasure are unfitting ; places where friend- 
ship's hands have lingered in each other ; where vows have been 
plighted, prayers offered, and tears of parting shed. O how the 
thoughts hover around such places, and travel back through im- 
measurable space to visit them ! But of all the spots on the 
green earth none is so sacred as that where rests, waiting the 
resurrection, those we have loved and cherished. Hence, in all 
ages, the better portion of mankind have chosen the loved spots 
for the burial of their dead, and in those spots they have loved 
to wander at even-tide to meditate and to weep alone. But 
among the charnel-houses of the dead, if there be one spot 
more sacred than the rest, it is a mother's grave. — Anon. 

Amid these quiet church -yard shades, 

I wander all alone, 
While, through the rustling leaves above, 

The south winds sigh and moan. 

The waving grass bends 'neath their breath 

O'er many graves that clasp 
The mould' ring forms of those who come 

To find their rest at last. 

One lonely grave, from all the rest, 

I seek among the trees : 
And there, with eyes bedimmed with tears, 

I sink upon my knees. 

T :31 deepening gloom shrouds all the land, 

I stay beside the stone, 
Where long, long years ago they laid, 

My joy of boyhood's home. 



272 THE DEAD. 

The cold, damp breath from distant sea 
Like death-dews chills my brow; 

But mem'ry bears me far away 
From scenes that hold me now — 

To the old home long loved but gone, 

To dear ones by my side, 
Who now are sundered many a mile 

Out in the world so wide. 

A face, deep-seamed with grief and care, 

Looks on me from above, 
Her eyes bright with a quenchless fire — 

The light of mother's love. 

Darkness, a pall, drapes all the place ; 

Chill dews the white stones lave ; 
The lingering hours of solemn night 

Find me by mother's grave.— N. W. Joraan. 



How peaceful the Grave ! its quiet how deep ! 
Its zephyrs breathe calmly, and soft is its sleep, 

As flowerets perfume it with ether. 
How lovely, how sweet the repose of the tomb ; 
No tempests are there ! but the nightingales come. 
And sing their sweet chorus of bliss. — Russian Anthology* 

LESSONS FROM A GRAVEYARD. 

Dost thou among these hillocks stray, 

O'er some dear idol's tomb to moan? 
Know that thy foot is on the clay 

Of hearts once wretched as thy own. 
How many a father's anxious schemes, 

How many rapturous thoughts of loversj 
How many a mother's cherished dreams, 

The swelling turf before thee covers 

Here for the living and the dead, 

The weepers and the friends they weep, 
Hath been ordained the same cold bed, 

The same dark night, the same long sleep; 
Why should'st thou writhe, and sob, and rave 

O'er those, with whom thou soon must be ? 
Death his own sting shall cure — the grave 

Shall vanquish its own victory. 




In Mother's Place. 



MA CA ULA Y— GILL. 2J$ 

Here learn that all the griefs and joys, 

Which now torment, which now beguile, 
Are children's hurts, are children's toys, 

Scarce worthy of one bitter smile. 
Here learn that pulpit, throne, and press, 

Sword, sceptre, lyre, alike are frail, 
That science is a blind man's guest, 

And History a nurse's tale. 

Here learn that glory and disgrace, 

Wisdom and folly pass away, 
That mirth hath its appointed space, 

That sorrow is but for a day; 
That all we love, and all we hate, 

That all we hope, and all we fear, 
Each mood of mind, each turn of fate, 

Must end in dust and silence here. — Lord Macauiay, 




CHAPTER III— MOURNING FOR THE DEAD. 

GRIEF FOR THE DEAD. 

< %v^pHRISTIAN grief for our deceased friends is not for- 
bidden in Scripture, but we have instances of it. Thus, 
Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and wept for her; 
Joseph made a mourning for his father seven days ; the 
children of Israel wept for Moses thirty days; David 
lamented the death of Saul, Jonathan and Abner ; Christ also 
wept over the grave of Lazarus ; good men who carried Stephen 
to his burial, made great lamentation over him ; and the Apostlt 
Paul grieved for the sickness of Epaphroditus, who was near 
unto death ; but immoderate sorrow, and all the extravagant 
forms of it are forbidden, for we are not to sorrow as those who 
have no hope. Nay, even Seneca, the heathen, who had some 
notion of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection, says 
thus/ "The thought of deceased friends is sweet and pleasant 



274 THE DEAD. 

to me, for I have enjoyed them as one that was about to lose 
them, and I have lost them as one that may have them again." 

Dr. Gill. 

Christianity does not repress weeping nor crush back tears. 
Its chastened mourning are not the hired wailings of Oriental 
funerals, nor the frantic howlings of the Irish wake. They are 
equally far removed from tearless and prayerless cremation, and 
the cold indifference of stoicism. Christian grief finds vent 
heavenward in cheerful submission to the divine will, and in 
sweet communion with the great Sympathizer who knows what 
it is to weep over the grave of friendship, and who has ever 
" borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." — E. Wenlworth, D. D. 

PATIENCE IN GRIEF. 

Nor even is that kind of impatience excused, which is felt 
on the loss of our friends, when a certain claim of grief pleadeth 
in its behalf. For the consideration of the apostle's warning 
must be preferred, who saith, Sorrow not for the sleep of any one, 
even as the Gentiles which have no hope. And with good cause. 
For if we believe that Christ rose again, we believe also in 
our own resurrection, for whose sakes he both died and rose 
again. Wherefore, since the resurrection of the dead is certain, 
,-grief for the dead is idle, and impatience in that grief is idle 
also. For why shouldst thou grieve, if thou believest not that 
he hath perished ? Why shouldst thou take impatiently that he 
is withdrawn for a time, who thou believest will return again ? 
That which thou thinkest to be death is but a departing on a 
journey. He that goeth before us is not to be mourned, but 
altogether to be longed for; and even this longing must be 
tempered with patience. For why shouldst thou not bear with 
moderation that he hath departed, when thou shalt presently 
follow ! But impatience in such a matter augureth ill for our 
hope, and is a double-dealing with our faith. Besides, we in- 
jure Christ, when as each is called away by him, we bear it 
impatiently, as though they were to be pitied. — Tertullian. 



SHAKESPEARE— B YRON—MACKA Y. 2?5 

My grief is all within ; 
And these external manners of lament 
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief 
That swells with silence in the tortured soul ; 
There lies the substance. — Shakespeare. 



They truly mourn that mourn without a witness. — Byron, 



THE CHILD AND THE MOURNERS. 

A little child, beneath a tree, 

Sat and chanted cheerily 

A little song, a pleasant song, 

Which was — she sang it all day long — 

" When the wind blows the blossoms fall ; 

But a good God reigns over all." 

There passed a lady by the way, 
Moaning in the face of day : 
There were tears upon her cheek, 
Grief in her heart too great to speak ; 
Her husband died but yester-morn, 
And left her in the world forlorn. 

She stopped and listened to the child 

That looked to heaven, and, singing, smiled 5 

And saw not for her own despair, 

Another lady, young and fair, 

Who, also passing, stopped to hear 

The infant's anthem ringing clear. 

For she but few sad days before 

Had lost the little babe she bore ; 

And grief was heavy at her soul 

As that sweet memory o'er her stole, 

And showed how bright had been the Past, 

The Present drear and overcast. 



And as they stood beneath the tree 
Listening, soothed and placidly, 
A youth came by, whose sunken eyes 
Spake of a load of miseries ; 
And he, arrested like the twain, 
Stopped to listen to the strain. 



2j6 THE DEAD. 

Death nad bowed the youthful head 
Of his bride beloved, his bride unwed 2 
Her marriage robes were fitted on, 
Her fair young face with blushes shone, 
When the destroyer smote her low, 
And changed the lover's bliss to woe. 

And these three listened to the song, 
Silver-toned, and sweet and strong, 
Which that child, the livelong day, 
Chanted to itself in play : 
" When the wind blows the blossoms fall 5 
But a good God reigns over all." 

The widow's lips impulsive moved; 
The mother's grief, tho' unreproved, 
Softened, as her trembling tongue 
Repeated what the infant sung ; 
And the sad lover, with a start, 
Conned it over to his heart. 

And though the child — if child it were, 

And not a seraph sitting there — 

Was seen no more, the sorrowing three 

Went on their way resignedly, 

The song still ringing in their ears — 

Was it music of the spheres ? 

Who shall tell ! They did not know. 
But in the midst of deepest woe 
f The strain recurred when sorrow grew, 

To warn them, and console them too : 
" When the wind blows the blossoms fall ; 
But a good God reigns over all." — Charles Mackay. 

THE INFLUENCE OF SORROW. 

Even in a Christian family, when death has entered there, and 
some one of the dear household has been taken, it has proved 
to be a new revelation of God, and of their Saviour, and of their 
own hearts, to themselves. In all their religion they had not 
known before how completely man depends on God. They had 
not known how absolutely essential to the human soul is the 
thought of the divine presence. They had not understood either 
the words or the character of Jesus. They had not known the 




The Man of Sorrows. 



ELI O T— CHR YSOSTOM. 



277 



depth of their own souls, nor the strength of their own affections. 
That one new experience has made all things new. The spirit- 
ual nature, although before recognized, now first appears in its 
true dignity, and for the first time they thoroughly understand 
that the real use of the present world is to educate the soul for 
heaven. They loved each other before, but new tenderness is 
now added to their love. Their kindness becomes more thought- 
ful, their affection more disinterested. They feel their depen- 
dence upon each other more deeply, and watch over each other 
with silent, inexpressible love. 

The fond union of youthful hearts seems close, and causes 
them to dwell in an elysium of joy ; but the husband and wife 
seldom know how much they love each other until they mourn 
together, weeping for their children because they are not. 

How quickly are the little dissensions and variances of life 
stilled by the presence of death ! How sternly is selfishness 
rebuked, and with what yearning of the heart towards Heaven 
is the resolution made to become more tender, more affectionate, 
more gentle, and more faithful in the whole conduct of life. 

William G. Eliot. 

THE JUST LIMITS OF SORROW. 

And how is it possible, you ask, not to grieve, since I am 
only a man ? Nor do I say that you should not grieve : I do 
not condemn- dejection, but the intensity of it. To be dejected 
is natural ; but to be overcome by dejection is madness, and 
folly, and unmanly weakness. You may grieve and weep ; but 
give not way to despondency, nor indulge in complaints. . . . 
Weep as wept your Master over Lazarus, observing the just 
limits of sorrow, which it is not proper to pass. . . . For 
on what account, tell me, do you thus weep for one departed ? 
Because he was a bad man ? You ought on that very account to 
be thankful, since the occasions of his wickedness are now cut off 
Because he was good and kind ? If so, you ought to rejoice ; 
since he has been soon removed, before wickedness had cor- 
rupted him ; and he has gone away to a world where he stands 
ever secure, and there is no room even to suspect a change. 



278 



THE DEAD. 



Because he was a youth ? For that, too, praise Him that has 
taken him, because He has speedily called him to a better lot 
Because he was an aged man ? On this account, also, give 
thanks, and glorify Him that has taken him. Be ashamed of 
your manner of burial. (The Greeks were sometimes violent 
in their expressions of mourning for the dead. — Editor) The 
singing of psalms, the prayers, the assembling of the (spiritual) 
fathers and brethren — all this is not that you may weep, and 
lament, and afflict yourselves, but that you may render thanks 
to Him who has taken the departed. For, as when men are 
called to some high office, multitudes with praises on their lips 
assemble to escort them at their departure to their stations, so 
do all with abundant praise join to send forward, as to greater 
honor, those of the pious who have departed. Death is rest, a 
deliverance from the exhausting labors and cares of this world. 
When, then, thou seest a relative departing, yield not to despon- 
dency ; give thyself to reflection ; examine thy conscience ; 
cherish the thought that after a little while this end awaits thee 
also. Be more considerate ; let another's death excite thee to 
salutary fear ; shake off all indolence ; examine your past deeds ; 
quit your sins, and commence a happy change. — Chrysosiom. 

SORROW. 

The learners in that often sad but blessed -school, even 
though sitting solitary, with pale faces, nerveless limbs and tears 
in their eyes, will find rest flowing in, not in violent floods, but 
as the dawn trembles into the sky, by gradual and almost im- 
perceptible increments and risings of the light. Gradually, but 
steadily, a tranquil faith sets up its unseen pillars of power be- 
neath and within those hanging heads and feeble knees, till the 
whole body of character is built up, by this edifying submission, 
a spiritual house. — Bishop Huntington. 

Excessive grief for the deceased is madness ; for it is an in- 
jury to the living, and the dead know it not. — Xenophon. 



CYPRIAN— PRIME. 279 

WHY GLORIFIED SOULS SHOULD NOT BE LAMENTED. 

We ought not to mourn for those who are delivered from the 
world by the call of the Lord, since we know they are not lost, 
but sent before us ; that they have taken their leave of us in 
order to precede us. We may long after them as we do for 
those who have sailed on a distant voyage, but not lament them. 
We may not here below put on dark robes of mourning, when 
they above have already put on the white robes of glory; we 
may not give the heathens any just occasion to accuse us of 
weeping for those as lost and extinct, of whom we say that they 
live with God, and of failing to prove by the witness of our 
hearts the faith we confess with our lips. We, who live in hope, 
who believe in God, and trust that Christ has suffered for us 
and risen again; we, who abide in Christ, who through him and 
in him rise again — why do we not ourselves wish to depart out 
of this world ; or, why do we lament for the friends who have 
been separated from us, as if they were lost, when Christ, our 
Lord and God, exhorts us saying, " I am the resurrection and 
the life ; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall 
he live ; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never 
die ? " Why are we not in haste to see our country and home, 
to greet our elders ? There await us a multitude of those whom 
we love, fathers, brothers and children, who are secure already 
of their own salvation and concerned only for ours. What 
mutual joy to them and to us, when we come into their pres- 
ence and into their embrace! — Cyprian. 

THE CHILD IS DEAD. 

The child is dead. You may put away its playthings. Put 
them where they will be safe. I would not like to have them 
broken or lost ; and you need not lend them to other children 
when they come to see us. It would pain me to see them in 
other hands, much as I love to see children happy with their 
toys. 

Its clothes you may lay aside ; I shall often look them over, 
and each of the colors that he wore will remind me of him as 
he looked when he was here. I shall weep often when I think 



280 THE DEAD. 

of him; but there is a luxury in thinking of the one that is 
gone, which I would not part with for the world. I think of my 
child now, a child always, though an angel among angels. 

The child is dead. The eye has lost its lustre. The hand is 
still and cold. Its little heart is not beating now. How pale 
it looks ! Yet the very form is dear to me. Every lock of its 
hair, every feature of the face, is a treasure that I shall prize the 
more, as the months of my sorrow come and go. 

Lay the little one in his coffin. He was never in so cold and 
hard a bed, but he will feel it not. He would not know it if he 
had been laid in his cradle, or in his mother's arms. Throw a 
flower or two by his side : like them he withered. 

Carry him out to the grave. Gently. It is a hard road this 
to the grave. Every jar seems to disturb the infant sleeper. 
Here we are at the brink of the sepulchre. Oh, how damp and 
dark and cold ! But the dead do not feel it. There is no pain, 
no fear, no weeping there. Sleep on now, and take your rest ! 

Fill it up ! Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ! Every clod seems 
to fall on my heart. Every smothered sound from the grave is 
saying, Gone, gone, gone ! It is full now. Lay the turf gently 
over the dear child. Plant a myrtle among the dear sods, and 
let the little one sleep among the trees and flowers. Our child 
is not there. His dust, precious dust, indeed, is there, but our 
child is in heaven. He is not here, he is risen. 

I shall not think of the form that is mouldering here atuong 
the dead ; and it will be a mournful comfort to come at limes, 
and think of the child that was once the light of our houso, and 
the idol — ah ! that I must own the secret of this sorrow —the 
idol of my heart. 

And it is beyond all language to express the joy, in the 
midst of tears, I feel, that my sin, in making an idol of the child, 
has not made that infant less dear to Jesus. Nay, there is even 
something that tells me the Saviour called the darling from me, 
that I might love the Saviour more when I had one child less 
to love. He knows our frame ; he knows the way to win and 
bind us. Dear Saviour, as thou hast my lamb, give me too a 
place in thy bosom. Set me as a seal on thy heart 



PRIME— HERBER T—RICHTER—P O TTS. 2 8 1 

And now let us go back to the house. It is strangely 
changed. It is silent and cheerless, gloomy even. When did 
I enter this door without the greeting of those lips and eyes, 
that I shall greet no more ? Can the absence of but one pro- 
duce so great a change so soon ? When one of the children 
was away on a visit, we did not feel the absence as we do now. 
That was for a time ; this is forever. He will not return. Hark ! 
I thought for a moment it was the child, but it was only my 
own heart's yearnings for the lost. He will not come again. 

Such thoughts as these have been the thoughts of many in 
the season of their first grief. — S. Irenceus Prime, D. D. 



Old men go to Death ; Death comes to young men. 

— Rev. George Herbert, A.M. 



Ephemera die all at sunset, and no insect of this class has 
ever sported in the beams of the morning sun. Happier are ye, 
little human ephemera ! Ye played only in the ascending 
beams, and in the early dawn, and in the eastern light; ye 
drank only of the prelibations of life ; hovered for a little space 
over a world of freshness and of blossoms ; and fell asleep in 
innocence before yet the morning dew was exhaled. — Richter. 

THE POIGNANCY OF PARENTAL GRIEF. 

If the death-stroke could be averted by the intensity of 
human sorrow, certainly children would never die. There is a 
poignancy in parental grief which is peculiar to itself. When 
the child was born a new class of feelings thrilled the soul. 
The thought that it was ours, that it was entirely dependent 
upon us, that if cared for it would rise and bless us, that all in 
the house gave it happy attention, was a source of satisfaction 
and joy. Then, after being with us for a day, to see it, in inno- 
cence, struck with disease and stung with pain, to see it sink 
down, down, and finally disappear, all this saddened the heart. 
The sense of loss accompanies us everywhere. 



282 THE DEAD. 

This grief can be known only by experience. It can never 
be expressed, and for it there is no earthly compensation. 

Many a minister has attended children's funerals, preached 
eloquent sermons thereat, addressed encouraging words to agon- 
izing parents, wept with them in condoling sorrow, visited them 
after the obsequies, and prayed with them amid the desolation 
of their homes, pointed them to the possible storms of evil 
which their deceased children had escaped, the heavenly felicities 
upon which they had entered; and, after apparently sufficient 
time for weeping, Christian sympathy has generated into pity 
for personal weakness : why refuse to be comforted ? Why 
decline to hearken to the voice of reason? Why turn, as from 
nothingness, from human speech and even from the Word of 
God? 

Such questions find an answer only in the experience of 
the heart. It was Sophocles who said, " They alone can feel for 
mourners who themselves have mourned." 

When with a fond wife, the mother of a dying babe, a man 
watches, for the first time, in awful suspense through the fatal 
illness, sees his innocent child writhe in the clutch of a relentless 
destroyer, witnesses his patience in pain, observes his sweet coun- 
tenance grow pale and sad, his lustrous eyes grow dim, his 
cherub hands grow tremulous and still, — never till then does he 
rrealize the nature of parental bereavement. As he looks upon 
the little form, frail and motionless, the thought occurs, as never 
before, What satisfaction can death have in such a conquest ? 
And, as the precious dust is laid in the tiny grave, every earthly 
consideration appears but as mockery to his grief, to drive 
deeper and fasten more securely the knife which has pierced his 
heart. Then it is that, during the waking hours, the words of 
the Psalmist have force, " I was dumb with silence and my sorrow 
was stirred." Then it is that in the dreams there are images of 
soft, white hands and echoes of a ringing laugh. He is gone ! 
is the fearful fact which time confirms. His form has vanished ; 
his voice is still, but the remembrance remains. The months 
and years may come and go, but the empty crib, the unused 
toys, the sod-grown grave, will bring tears to the eyes. Nor, 



PO TTS—L ONGFELL O W. 



283 



independent of religion, will a single requiting thought be found. 
Only when the heart looks to the future — away out beyond the 
roll of years and the fading of material beauty — to that home of 
the soul where God is the Father, and Jesus is the Elder Brother, 
where the rosy cheek of childhood is fanned by the wings of 
the cherubim, and angels sing the lullabies, and grace is had to 
say with David, "/ shall go to him, but he shall not return to 
me," can there be reconciliation to that dispensation of Provi- 
dence which involves in such a sorrow. 

" Lone are the paths, and sad the bowers, 
Whence thy meek smile is gone : 
But O, a brighter home than ours, 

In heaven is now thine own." — Editor. 

THE REAPER AND THE FLOWERS. 

There is a reaper whose name is Death, 

And with his sickle keen 
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath, 

And the flowers that grow between. 

" Shall I have naught that is fair? " saith he, 

" Have naught but the bearded grain ? 
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to roe, 

I will give them all back again." 

He gazed on the flowers with tearful eyes, 

He kissed their drooping leaves : 
It was for the Lord of Paradise 

He bound them in his sheaves. 

" My Lord hath need of these flowerets gay,*' 

The reaper said, and smiled ; 
" Dear tokens of the earth are they, 

Where he was once a child. 

" They all shall bloom in fields of light, 

Transplanted by my care ; 
And saints upon their garments white 

These sacred blossoms wear." 

And the mother gave, in tears and pain, 

The flowers she most did love; 
But she knew she should find them all again 

In the fields of light above. 



284 THE DEAD. 



Oh ! not in cruelty, not in wrath 

The Reaper came that day ; 
'Twas an angel visited the green earth, 

And took the flowers away. — H. W. Longfellow* 



Oft have I thought they err, who, having lost 
That love-gift of our youth, an infant child, 
Yield the faint heart to those emotions wild 

With which, too oft, strong Memory is crost, 

Shrinking with sudden gasp, as if a ghost 

Frowned in their path. Nor thus the precepts mild 
Of Jesus teach ; which never yet beguiled man 

With vain promises. God loves us most 

When chastening us ; and he who conquered death 
Permits not that we still deem death a curse. 
The font is man's true tomb ; the grave his nurse 

For heaven, and feeder with immortal breath. 

Oh, grieve not for the dead ! None pass from earth 
Too soon : God then fulfils his purpose in our birth. 

Sir Aubrey De Vere. 

PARENTAL SUBMISSION. 

During the absence of the Rabbi Meir, his two sons died, both 
of them of uncommon beauty, and enlightened in the divine 
law. His wife bore them to her chamber, and laid them upon 
her bed. When Rabbi Meir returned, his first inquiry was for 
his sons. His wife reached to him a goblet; he praised the 
Lord at the going out of the Sabbath, drank, and again asked, 
" Where are my sons ? " " They are not far off," she said, 
placing food before him that he might eat. He was in a genial 
mood, and when he had said grace after meat, she thus 
addressed him : " Rabbi, with thy permission, I would fain 
propose to thee one question. 1 ' "Ask it then, my love," replied 
he. "A few days ago, a person entrusted some jewels to my 
custody, and now he demands them ; should I give them back 
to him ? " " This is a question," said the Rabbi, " which my 
wife should not have thought it necessary to ask. What ! 
wouldst thou hesitate or be reluctant to restore to every one his 
own?" "No," she replied, "but yet I thought it best not to 
restore them without acquainting thee therewith." She then led 




The Sorrowing Mother. 



THOMAS BROOKS. 



28$ 



him to the chamber, and, stepping to the bed, took the white 
covering from the dead bodies. "Ah, my sons, my sons," 
loudly lamented their father. " My sons ! the light of my eyes 
and the light of my understanding : I was your father, but you 
were my teachers in the law." The mother turned away and 
wept bitterly. At length she took her husband by the hand 
and said, " Rabbi, didst thou not teach me that we must not be 
reluctant to restore that which was intrusted to our keeping ? 
See, the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed 
be the name of the Lord." " Blessed be the name of the Lord," 
echoed the Rabbi, " and blessed be his holy name forever." 

From the Mishna of the Rabbins. 

I saw an infant, marble cold, 

Snatched from the pillowing breast, 
And in the shroud's embracing fold 

Laid down to dreamless rest: 
And, moved with bitterness, I sighed, 

Not for the babe that slept, 
But for the mother at its side, 

Whose soul in anguish wept. — Selected. 

THE LOSS OF CHILDREN. 

Many parents who have sought the lives of the children with 
tears, have lived afterward to see them take such courses, and 
come to such dismal ends, as have brought their gray heads 
with sorrow to the grave. It had been ten thousand times a 
greater mercy to many parents to have buried their children as 
soon as ever they had been born, than to see them come to 
such unhappy ends as they often do. Well, Christian, it may 
be the Lord has taken from thee such a hopeful son, or such a 
dear daughter, that thou sayest, How can I hold my peace ? 
But hark, Christian, hark ; canst thou tell me how long thou 
must have travailed in birth with them again, before they had 
been born again, before they had been twice born? Would not 
every sin that they had committed against thy gracious God 
caused a new throe in thy soul ? Would not every temptation 
that they had fallen before, been as a dagger at thy heart? 
Would not every affliction that should have befallen them, been 



286 tHE DEAD. 

as a knife at thy throat ? What are those pains and pangs and 
throes of child-birth, to those after pains, pangs and throes that 
might have been brought upon thee by the sins and sufferings 
of thy children ? Well, Christians, hold your peace, for you do 
not know what thorns in your eyes, what goads in your sides, 
or what spears in your hearts, such near and dear mercies might 
have proved, had they been longer continued. — Thomas Brooks. 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade 

Death came with frindly care ; 
The opening bud to heaven conveyed, 

And bade it blossom there. — Coleridge. 

CHILDREN TAKEN IN MERCY. 

Mourner, whatever may be your grief for the death of your 
children, it might have been still greater for their life. Bitter 
experience once led a good man to say, " It is better to weep 
for ten children dead than for one living." Remember the 
heart-piercing affliction of David, whose son sought his life. 
Your love for your children will hardly admit of the thought of 
such a thing as possible in your own case. They appeared in- 
nocent and amiable; and you fondly believed that, through your 
care and prayers, they would have become the joy of your 
hearts. But parents much more frequently see the vices of 
<their children than their virtues. And even should your chil- 
dren prove amiable and promising, you might live to be the 
wretched witness of their sufferings. Some parents have felt 
unutterable agonies of this kind. God may have taken the 
lamented objects of your affection from evil to come. — Flavel. 

Oh, consider, ere you accuse Providence for the stroke, that 
this death, apparently so untimely, is possibly the greatest in- 
stance toward you both of the mercy and love of God. The 
creature so dear to you may have been taken from some sad 
reverse of fortune, or from the commission of some great crime, 
which might have endangered his salvation. To secure this, 
God has removed him from temptation. — Fenelon. 



ANONYMOUS. 2 %*J 

ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD. 

As the sweet flower that scents the morn, 

But withers in the rising day, 
Thus lovely seemed the infant's dawn, 

Thus swiftly fled his life away. 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 

Death timely came with friendly care, 
The opening bud to heaven conveyed, 

And bade it bloom forever there. 



Yet the sad hour that took the boy 

Perhaps has spared a heavier doom, 
Snatched him from scenes of guilty joy, 

Or from the pangs of ills to come. 

He died before his infant soul 

Had ever burned with wrong desire — 
Had ever spurned at Heaven's control, 

Or madly quenched its sacred fire. 

He died to sin, he died to care, 

But for a moment felt the rod ; 
Then, springing on the noiseless air, 

Spread his light wings, and soared to God. 

— Belfast Selection of /fvmm 

GONE BEFORE. 

There's a beautiful face in the silent air 

Which follows me ever and near, 
With its smiling eyes and amber hair, 
With voiceless lips, yet with breath of pray'r, 

That I feel, but I cannot hear. 

The dimpled hand, and ringlet of gold, 

Lie low in a marble sleep ; 
I stretch my hand for a clasp of old ; 
But the empty air is strangely cold, 

And my vigil alone I keep. 

There's a sinless brow with a radiant crown, 

And a cross laid down in the dust; 
There's a smile where never a shade comes now. 
And tears no more from those dear eyes flow, 

So sweet in their innocent trust. 



S S& THE DEAD. 

Ah. well ! and summer is come again, • 

Singing her same old songs ; 
But oh ! it sounds like a sob of pain 
As it floats in sunshine and in rain, 

O'er the hearts of the world's great throng. 

There's a beautiful region above the skies, 

And I long to reach its shore, 
For I know I shall find my treasure there, 
The laughing eyes and the amber hair 

Of the loved one gone before. 

SADNESS NOT UNHAPPINESS. 

Although on approaching the graves of our dear ones, or 
when communing in spirit with them, a feeling of sadness may 
steal over us, this sadness is not unhappiness, but a sweet up- 
lifting of the soul by a rapturous yearning toward those that 
have gone before us. Know ye not that bliss can have its sad- 
ness, and silent joy its tears ? If ye will call this feeling pain^ 
oh, then it is a sweet pain, in which there is greater enjoyment 
than noisy mirth reveals. Know ye not that when a delicate 
and refined soul is most penetrated by joy, it is most attuned to 
melancholy, and that this feeling in its turn is followed by se- 
rene composure and tranquil happiness ? 

When a father or a mother sinks down by the grave of a lost 
darling, or when the sight of the trifles which the dear departed 
one was fond of in life, calls forth his memory in livelier colors ; 
when a gentle and affectionate child treasures up, as a sacred 
relic after the death of father or mother, some object that has 
belonged to either ; when husband or wife, separated from the 
loved partner of life, and cherishing the remembrance of their 
mutual love and their happy marriage, places great store upon 
some ring, or some letters traced by the dear hand as a token 
of the affection that united them in life, and a symbol of the in- 
dissoluble union of their souls ; when lovers early parted, or 
when friends, brothers, sisters, remember in solitude and retire- 
ment the dear oiies they have lost ; when, with many a deep- 
drawn sigh, their lips whisper the cherished name ; when their 
tears, falling on the grave, bear witness to their undying affec- 




There's a beautiful region beyond the skies, 

And I long to reach its shore ; 
For I know I shall find my treasure there, 
The laughing eyes and the amber hair, 
Of the loved one gone before." 



(See page 288.) 



2SCH0KKE—MAR TINEA U. 



289 



tion ; is it pain and anguish which they experience, or a sad but 
heavenly satisfaction ? If no gratification is mixed up with 
these tears and sighs, why, then, do we mortals, who are so 
prone to shun everything that is painful, so often indulge in 
such sorrow? — Zschokke. 

MOURNFUL MEMORIES ARE PRECIOUS. 

The work of yesterday, with its place and hour, has but a 
dull look, when we recall it. But the scene of our childish 
years — the homestead, it may be, with its quaint garden and its 
orchard grass; the bridge across the brook, from which we 
dropped the pebbles and watched the circling waves; the school- 
house in the field, whose bell broke up the game and quickened 
every lingerer's feet ; the yew-tree path, where we crossed the 
churchyard, with arm around the neck of a companion now 
beneath the sod : how soft the lights, how tender the shadows, in 
which that picture lies ! how musical across the silence are the 
tones it flings ! The glare, the heat, the noise, the care are 
gone; and the sunshine sleeps, and the waters ripple, and the 
lawns are green, as if it were in Paradise. But in these minor 
religions of life, it is the personal images of companions loved 
and lost that chiefly keep their watch with us, and sweeten and 
solemnize the hours. The very child that misses the mother's 
appreciating love is introduced, by his first tears, to that thirst of 
the heart, which is the early movement of piety, ere yet it has got 
its wings. And I have known the youth who, through long years 
of harsh temptations, and then short years of wasting decline, 
has, from like memory, never lost the sense of a guardian angel 
near, and lived in the enthusiasm and died into the embrace of 
the everlasting holiness. In the heat and struggle of mid-life^ 
it is a severe but often a purifying retreat, to be lifted into the 
lonely observatory of memory, above the fretful illusions of the 
moment, and in the presence once more of the beauty and the 
sanctity of life. The voiceless counsels that look through the 
visionary eyes of our departed steal into us behind our will, and 
sweep the clouds away, and direct us on a wiser path than we 
should know to choose. If age ever gains any higher wisdom, 
19 



2qo THE DEAD. 

it is chiefly that it sits in a longer gallery of the dead, and sees 
the noble and saintly faces in further perspective and more vari- 
ous throng. The dim abstracted look that often settles on the 
features of the old, what means it ? Is it a mere fading of the 
life ? an absence, begun already, from the drama of humanity ? 
a deafness to the cry of its woes and the music of its affections ? 
Not always so : the seeming forgetfulness may be but brightened 
memory; and if the mists lie on the outward present, and make 
it a gathering night, the more brilliant is the lamp within, that 
illuminates the figures of the past, and shows again, by their 
flitting shadows, the plot in which they moved and fell. It is 
through such natural experiences — the treasured sanctities of 
every true life — that God " discovereth to us deep things out 
of darkness, and turneth into light the shadow of death." 

—James Martineau, D. D., LL. D. 

There is a tear for all that die ; 

A mourner o'er the humblest grave. — Byron. 



CHAPTER IV.— THE STATE OF THE DEAD. 

r 

(The nine succeeding sections were written expressly for this volume.) 

SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 

N formulating scientific dogmas with regard to the state 
of the dead, rhetorical and poetical descriptions, and 
moral reflections, have little or no place. The subject 
must be viewed in "a dry light." The discussion may 
indeed be illuminated and enlivened by an occasional 

pertinent metaphor; but there must be rigid abstention in the 

premises, as only truth and fact are in demand. 

It is almost needless to say that observation and Scripture, 

interpreted by reason, are our only sources of information. The 

authority of the Bible, of course, is assumed, and the rigid laws 




T. O. SUMMERS, D. D. 29 1 

of exegesis are recognized ; the deposition of the senses is ad- 
mitted, subject to the laws of evidence recognized in all our 
courts, civil and ecclesiastical. 

— Rev. T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 

BIBLE REVEALS EXISTENCE OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH. 

The Bible clearly reveals the immortality of the soul, and its 
existence in the intermediate state, apart from the body. 
Hence Paul speaks of being absent from the body and present 
with the Lord. John saw multitudes of ransomed spirits in his 
visions of heaven. 

We do not say that the soul could not be annihilated. He 
who created, could destroy it , but he has not said that he will 
destroy any soul in the sense of annihilation ; and it would be 
overbold in us to say it for him. — Ibid. 

NO SLEEP OF THE SOUL. 

As there will be no annihilation, so there will be no sleep of 
the soul. The Bible is far from inculcating Psychopannachy. 

The souls in paradise are represented as in a state of great 
activity : " They rest not day and night" — " they serve him day 
and night" — that is, they are perpetually and joyfully engaged 

" In work and worship so divine." 

The passages in the Old Testament which speak of death as 
a sleep, and sheol as a place and state of unconsciousness, 
refer exclusively to the body. 

Sheol occurs sixty-five times in the Old Testament — rendered 
in the authorized version thirty-one times " hell," thirty-one 
times " grave," and three times " pit " — generally hades in the 
Septuagint. It never refers to the world beyond the grave, but 
to the grave itself, or the state of the dead — with reference to 
the body, never to the soul, or spirit. 

Hades occurs eleven times in the New Testament — never 
referring to the world of spirits — unless the parabolical use of 
it in the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus, may be so con- 
strued. These terms give no aid and comfort to soul-sleepers, 
any more than to Destructionists or Universalists. — Ibid. 



2Q2 THE DEAD. 

DEVELOPMENT IN THE SEPARATE STATE. 

Without sanctioning the modern figment of evolution, we 
infer from what Scripture says on the subject, that as there is a 
development of all our powers in this world, till they are tram- 
meled by the infirmities of the failing body, so there will be a 
development, only on a larger scale and an unending duration 
in that blessed world where there will be no corruptible body 
to press down the incorruptible soul. 

Let us see what that development involves in regard to the 
faculties of the soul. 

The intellect expands in proportion to the extent of its exer- 
cise, and the ideas which it gains. But in heaven it is always 
active ; and the objects which engage its attention are the most 
glorious, and varied, and everlasting. How the intellect nrwt 
grow ! 

"Then shall I see, and hear, and know, 
All I desired or wished beLow, 
And every power find sweet employ 
In that eternal world of joy ! " 

Then there are the sensibilities. How must they be devel- 
oped, amid the friendships, and loves, and joys, of the heavenly 
world ! In the kingdom of grace they are greatly developed. 

"And if our fellowship below 

In Jesus is so sweet, 
What height of rapture shall we know 
When round his throne we meet ! " 

It is so with the Will. By constant direction toward worthy 
objects and operations in this world, it gathers strength, and 
fixity, and sovereignty over every thing which would control our 
action. How much more must it be so in the Better Land ! It 
will never lose its freedom — it is absurd to say that liberty will 
ever develop into necessity. A free moral agent is the noblest 
work of God. But all the motives brought to bear upon the 
soul in heaven through all eternity are adapted to develop all 
its conative power, so that any irresolution or wavering in regard 



T. O. SUMMERS, D. D. 



293 



to duty will be as virtually out of the question as if it were 
philosophically impossible. The Will is sure to flow on forever 
in harmony with the divine Will ; and like an ever-rolling stream 
it will gather momentum and force, as it flows on through the 
eternal ages. — Rev. T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 

INFANTS IN THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 

This doctrine of development has a peculiar bearing upon 
the case of infants. 

There is but one passage in the Bible which bears directly upon 
the post-mortem state of infants — if that does, — to wit : " Of such 
is the kingdom of heaven." " The kingdom of heaven," or " of 
God," here means the Church on earth ; but the Church militant 
has its development in the Church triumphant ; and it consists 
in the translation of its subjects to that higher sphere. The 
statement is tantamount to a declaration that infants have an 
interest in the heavenly world, which they do not forfeit if they 
die in infancy. 

The horrible tenet of Augustin, that some infants will be 
damned — though their damnation will not be as deep as that 
of older reprobates — makes God worse than the devil — worse 
than " murderer Moloch," who made them indeed pass through 
a fire, but it soon exhausted its tormenting force, whereas this 
shall never be quenched ! 

The good and great, but visionary, Dr. Watts was shocked 
at this diabolical dogma of " the hard father of infants " — as 
Augustin is called — as well he might be shocked at it ; but he 
suggested that the children of the wicked are annihilated ! He 
does not say how wicked they must be, and whether both 
parents must be wicked, to insure annihilation, or whether one 
good parent would secure eternal life to the child; and he never 
seems to have thought of the principle of Atavism, which allows 
of the baptism of children of wicked parents, if any of their an- 
cestors were pious ! 

But, despite old, cruel creeds, few Christians of our time hold 
that infants are damned, or doubt that dying infants are trans- 
ported to heaven, there to live forever. 



294 



THE DEAD. 



Here comes in the doctrine of development. 
It is asked, What can an infant do in heaven ? 
We say, with a good Antipaedobaptist, 

" Millions of infant souls compose 
The family above." 

And we know what infants do in the family below: they 
develop every day. Every member of the family assists in 
the development. So it will be in heaven, only on a larger 
scale. 

Shakespeare (or whoever else wrote the Yorkshire Tragedy) 
speaks of babes in heaven, dandled in the laps of angels, and a 
poet of our own day says : 

"A babe in glory is a babe forever." 

There may be a basis of truth in this. 

Infants in heaven may draw out the tender regards of angels 
and saints, and why not add, the Saviour himself, who took so 
affectionate interest in them when on the earth ? 

It requires no Scripture — hence there is none — to prove that 
infantile spirits rapidly develop amid the exciting and varied 
scenes and associations of the heavenly world. Acting inde- 
pendently of all sense -relations and sense-media, their intellect, 
sensibilities and will, coming in direct contact with objects so 
attractive, must expand with marvellous rapidity. As their 
seniors develop as rapidly in their sphere, they may always be 
in advance of them in the grand march — the eternal progress — 
so that forever the distinction may, in some sort, remain. But 
this verges on the nebulous, and we recede into the light. Our 
faith can behold the infantile heirs of immortality acting, and 
being acted upon, by the law of development, changed from 
glory to glory. 

In his Lyric Poems, Dr. Watts has "An Elegiac Thought 
on Mrs. Anne Warner, who died December 18, 1707, a few 
days after the birth and death of her first child," in which he 
says: 



T. O. SUMMERS, D. D. 2 g$ 

" Or does she seek ? or has she found her babe 
Among the infant nation of the blest, 
And clasped her to her soul, to satiate there 
The young maternal passion, and absolve 
The unfulfilled embrace ! Thrice happy child, 
That saw the light, and turned its eyes aside 
From our dim regions to th' Eternal Sun, 
And led the parents' way to glory! There 
Thou art forever hers, with powers enlarged 
For love reciprocal and sweet converse." 

That certainly has a Biblical air as well as a Miltonic ring. It 
reminds us of Milton's exquisite apostrophe to his infant niece, 
deceased : 

" But oh, why didst thou not stay here below 
To bless us with thy heaven-loved, innocence — 
To stand 'twixt us and our deserved smart ? 
But thou canst best perform that office where thou art." 

But that is one step beyond our boundary ; we recede again 
into the clear light. — Rev. T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 

HEATHENS IN THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 

By the analogy of infants we infer that persons ill-instructed 
in this life will have " a new departure " under more favorable 
conditions in the life to come, provided they are not incorrigibly 
bad. 

By a misinterpretation of certain passages of Scripture, some 
maintain that heathens, Mohammedans and other unenlightened 
persons, will all necessarily be damned — damned for not believ- 
ing in a Saviour of whom they never heard ! for not professing a 
creed never proposed to them ! for not obeying a law which was 
never promulged to them ! It is astounding that men will 
hold dogmas so horrifying to our humanity, so repulsive to our 
reason, so contrary to our common sense ! 

There are, of course, retributions for incorrigible sinners of 
this class — light, indeed, compared with the heavy retributions 
for incorrigible sinners who perfectly well knew their duty, 
but who did it not. But, as Dr. Olin used to say, " God will 
save everybody that he can." 



296 



THE DEAD. 



Here comes in the law of development : if, under the rubbish 
which has accumulated on the minds of these poor creatures, 
God sees the germ of goodness— a concurrence with preventing 
grace which is given to every child of man, through the merci- 
ful economy of redemption — what hinders that they should be 
placed in some low condition in heaven, corresponding to their 
moral and intellectual status ? and what hinders that they should 
begin instantly to develop in that land where "everlasting spring 
abides ? " — a genial clime, where the merest germ will soon ex- 
pand, and the smallest bud will soon burst into beauty, and send 
forth its fragrance on the paradisic air ! 

We have engaged to keep from the enchantments of imagina- 
tion in this discussion ; but we must say that we have often 
imagined the action of a soul of this class when admitted into 
the blissful region, and when his eyes were attracted by the 
cynosure of all eyes, the Lamb in the midst of the throne, bear- 
ing "the dear tokens of his passion," and when told by some 
friendly angel or redeemed spirit, that he was indebted to his 
grace for admission into that blissful region, how earnestly 
would he run to cast himself at the Saviour's feet, hardly for- 
bearing to denounce the heartless church which denied him 
"the lamp of life," when he was on this dark and sin-cursed 
earth ! No place for such a man in heaven ! then there is no 
place in the universe for a heaven ! 

< There is no verging toward Universalism in extending this 
merciful provision to many in Christendom who are born and 
bred in circumstances but little better than those which sur- 
round the heathen on the Ganges, the Congo, or the Yang-tse- 
kiang. No, this is not Universalism. This principle does not 
apply to such as are specified in the account of the Great 
Assize in Matt. xxv. — who, for their dereliction of well-known 
duty, are sentenced to " everlasting punishment." 

— Rev. T. O. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 

NO PURGATORY. 

There is no Purgatory laid down in the authentic map of the 
world beyond the grave. That is a Terra Incognita: it is a 



T. O. SUMMERS, D. D. 



29; 



Romish myth. The texts of Scripture adduced for it are utterly 
irrelevant : even that fabulous passage in the Second Book of 
Maccabees, where Judas is said to have ordered sacrifices to-be 
offered for the sins of the idolatrous Jews who died in battle, 
speaks nothing for Purgatory. 

The elder Romanists, and Romanists still in benighted papal 
regions, describe their Purgatory as a dark territory, just above 
hell, but under heaven, where the souls of those who die in 
venial sin are roasted on spits with material fire, and otherwise 
tortured, until, by the suffrages of saints in heaven and the 
faithful on earth, they are released and admitted into paradise. 
They assert that apparitions from Purgatory make revelations 
to this effect. 

But in Protestant countries they frequently modify their teach- 
ing. They say that there is, indeed, a place between heaven 
and hell, called Purgatory ; but there is no material fire there — 
the penitents in Purgatory are consumed in the flames of strong 
desire to be admitted into the society of the blessed, whom they 
see afar off in Abraham's bosom. None of us, they say, or at 
least very few of us, are fit for heaven at the time of death, but 
all deserve some punishment and need some purgation, to make 
us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light. 
But this plausible sophism is so transparent that a child versed 
in Scripture can readily see through it. 

We are indebted to Christ, whose blood, applied by the Holy 
Spirit, cleanseth from all sin, for our meetness for heaven, and 

"Our title to heaven, his mei - its we take." 

Then as to special personal congruity for the enjoyments, em- 
ployments and associations of heaven, here comes in again the 
law of development which extends to all states and conditions 
of men who are not incorrigibly bad. 

The Bible says nothing of any intermediate place between 
heaven and hell, whether Limbus Patrum, Limbus I?tfantum, 
Purgatory cr Paradise. Of Paradise, indeed, it does speak, but 
that is only a beautiful figurative designation of heaven itself, 
even the third heaven, where God resides.— Rev. T. O. Summers, 
D. D. } LL. D. 



298 THE DEAD. 

NO NEW PROBATION IN THE SEPARATE STATE. 

As there is no Purgatory in the other world, so there is no 
probation there — at least we find no proof in the Bible that there 
is. Dr. Paley and others — including many excellent evangelical 
German divines — think there may be a probation for some 
persons after death. A mistaken view of Peter's reference to 
Christ's preaching by Noah to the antediluvians, now in the 
prison of hell, is cited for this speculation — which has nothing 
better for its 'support than the false exegesis. 

The retributions in the other world are for the deeds done in 
the body — done in this world. 

Whether or not men will be rewarded for the good deeds 
they do in heaven, or punished for the bad deeds done in hell, 
does not concern this discussion. We shall be under law to all 
eternity, and where there is a law it would seem there must be 
sanctions to guard it, or to prompt to obedience, and deter from 
disobedience. But it does not appear that any terms will be 
offered after death, or propositions set forth, prescribing repent- 
ance, faith and obedience, as in this world, on the performance 
or non-performance of which men will be assigned to heaven or 
hell. — Rev. T. 0. Summers, D. D., LL. D. 

DEGREES OF REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 

'< The Bible evidently teaches that by the law of moral attrac- 
tion, every one leaving this world will " go to his own place " 
in the next, whether heaven or hell — purgatory there is none. 

Moral affinity and capacity will determine every man's eternal 
destiny. Thus well-instructed, cultured and developed believers 
will move in a higher sphere than others, whose characters were 
not formed under so favorable conditions, or who did not so 
well improve their privileges. This will, indeed, result in great 
inequalities in heaven ; but it has been settled in the schools, 
that there are various degrees of glory in heaven, as there are 
various degrees of retribution in hell. Variety runs through all 
the universe ; " and every man shall receive his own reward, 
according to his own labor." 

Some will " scarcely be saved." They will pass, as it were, 



SUMMERS— FOSTER. 2 QQ 

unobserved into some comparatively obscure nook in paradise, 
wondering themselves at their admission. 

Others, who have done some good service in " the sacramental 
host of God's elect," shall have an ovation decreed them. 

Others again, who have well contested the noble contest 
(tbv dywj/a tov xa%6v rjyuvioy.at, 2 Tim. iv. f) like Paul — who jeop- 
arded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field, 
and who labored and suffered much in promoting " the growing 
empire of their King " — shall enjoy a triumph — "an entrance 
shall be ministered unto them abundantly into the everlasting 
kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ " — they shall 
be forever housed in the Triumphalis Domus — in the most splen- 
did mansions in. the Father's house on high — the metropolis 
of the universe — they shall be 

" Foremost of the saints in light, 
Nearest the eternal throne ! " 

To any one who is curious to know more of the state of the 
dead, we can only say : 

" Till death thou searchest out in vain 
What only dying can explain." 

— Rev. T. O. Summers, D. D. y LL. D. 

THE DEAD LIVE. 

What then is this truth which we believe ? The dead live. 
In the years gone we had them with us ; they became very dear 
to us. They separated from the throng, and gave us their love. 
They grew into our being and were a part of us. One day 
they became very weary and sick. We thought nothing of it at 
first ; but morning after morning came, and they were more faint. 
The story of the dark days that followed is too sad. One dreary 
night, with radiant face, they kissed us, and said good-bye. 
They were dead. Kind neighbors came and carried them out 
of our homes, and we followed with dumb awe, and saw them 
lay them down gently beneath the earth. We returned to the 
vacant house, which never could be home again. Our hearts 
were broken. The earth and sky have been so dark since that 



300 



THE DEAD. 



day. We have searched through the long nights and desolate 
days for them, but we cannot find them ; they do not come back. 
We listen, but we get no tidings. Neither form nor voice comes 
to us. The dark, silent immensity has swallowed them up. Are 
they extinct ? No. They live ; we cannot tell where, whether 
near us or remote ; we cannot tell in what form ; but they live. 
They are essentially the same beings they were when they went 
in and out among us. There has been no break in their life. 
It is as if they had crossed the sea. The old memories and old 
loves still are with them. New friends do not displace old ones. 
They are more beautiful than when we knew them, and purer, 
and holier, and happier. They are not sick or weary now. 
They have no sorrow. They are not alone. They have joined 
others. They think and talk of us. They make affectionate 
inquiries for our welfare. They wait for us. They are learning 
great lessons, which they mean to recite to us some day. They 
are not lonely ; they are a glorious company. They have no 
envies or jealousies. They are ravished with the happiness of 
their new life. I do not know where it is, or how it is ; but 
I am certain it is so. They are kings and priests unto God. 
They wear crowns that flash in the everlasting light. They 
wear robes that are spotlessly white. They wave victorious 
palms. They sing anthems of such exceeding sweetness as no 
earthly choirs ever approach. They stand before the throne. 
They fly on ministries of love. They muse on tops of Mount Zion. 
They meditate on the banks of the river of life. They are 
rapturous with ecstasies of love. God wipes away all tears from 
their faces ; and there is no more death, neither sorrow, nor 
crying, nor any more pain ; for the former things are passed 
away. The glorious angels are their teachers and companions. 
But why attempt to describe their ineffable state ? It hath not 
entered into the heart of man to conceive it. 

—Bishop R. S. Foster, D D. y LL. D. 

THEIR WORKS LIVE. 

The cedar is the most useful when dead. It is the most 
productive when its place knows it no more. There is no 



HAMIL TON—AIKMAN. 



3°r 



timber like it. Firm in the grain and capable of the finest 
polish, the tooth of no insect will touch it, and Time himself 
can hardly destroy it. Diffusing a perpetual fragrance through 
the chambers which it ceils, the worm will not corrode the 
book which it protects, nor the moth corrupt the garment which 
it guards ; all but immortal itself, it transfuses its amaranthine 
qualities to the objects around it. Every Christian is useful in 
his life, but the goodly cedars are the most useful afterward. 

Luther is dead, but the Reformation lives. Knox, Melville, 
and Henderson are dead, but Scotland «till retains a Sabbath 
and a Christian peasantry, a Bible in every house, and a school 
in every parish. Bunyan is dead, but his bright spirit still walks 
the earth in its Pilgrim's Progress. Baxter is dead, but souls are 
quickened by the Saint's Rest. Cowper is dead, but the " golden 
apples " are still as fresh as when newly gathered in the " silver 
basket " of the Olney Hymns. Eliot is dead, but the missionary 
enterprise is young. Henry Martyn is dead, but who can count 
the apostolic spirits who, phcenix-like, have started from the 
funeral pile ? Howard is dead, but modern philanthropy is only 
commencing its career. Raikes is dead, but the Sunday-schools 
go on. — Rev. G. Hamilton. 

THE DEAD SPEAK. 

The dead speak by their lives, by their works, and by their 
words. They speak in the ear of memory and affection. The 
friends we have loved pass away from our sight, but they live 
in our memory and our hearts, while their voice comes back to 
us with a power that it never had when we saw their moving 
lips. To some there are more voices of the dead than of the 
living, and they are sweeter voices than the ear shall ever hear 
again. A little thing may wake them. Perhaps it is the tone 
of some friend who is speaking. It came and went, and was 
only for a moment, but in that moment memory was busy, and 
the old remembered voice comes up ; you hear the living no 
more while you listen to the dead, and your eye grows dreamy 
while you listen. Your look falls upon some memorial of the 
past ; perhaps it is the little shoe that you took off once with a 



302 



THE DEAD. 



smile and a kiss, but which has been waiting ever since for the 
cushioned feet that shall fill it no more ; perhaps it is the shawl 
that you once wrapped around the form that you could shield 
from the winter's wind, but not from the blast of death ; perhaps 
it is a footfall that is wondrously like the tread telling of a pres- 
ence which was life and health to the home ; perhaps it is the 
worn cane which once steadied uncertain steps ; perhaps it is 
only a glove that you last saw in a sister's hand — anything may 
be enough. Straightway your gaze is fixed, you hold the 
token, but soon you see it not, your eye is looking far beyond 
through the door it has opened. Now the past is past no 
more, the dead are dead no more, nor are they silent. With 
the form comes the voice. You listen, and it begins to speak. 
It may be a little voice which prattles as in the other days; 
perhaps it is a mother's voice, and it calls your name, and then 
you listen to words of counsel and advice which you did not 
know before had so deep a meaning; perhaps it is a wife's 
voice, and it speaks in all the confidence of love. Whichever it 
may be, it is real now and has a more than living power. You 
only can tell what the voice is saying, your ear alone heard it 
and your heart alone interprets it. 

Sometimes the dead speak reproachfully, and sometimes 
gladly and encouragingly. The voices are not all or always 
sad, nor always full of cheer. The long-hushed whisper never 
has in it anything of anger or of passion ; it is very calm and 
low, but terribly distinct, and changes not. Oh, how many a 
weary, discouraged wayfarer has started up with another life, 
because a low, sweet call has reached his ear from the long- 
departed. — William Aikman, D. D. 

THE DEAD ARE ACTIVE BEYOND. 

It may be argued that Jesus said, " The night cometh when 
no man can work" (John ix. 4). But he is there speaking of 
the works of the present life, which lapse at death, and his 
words therefore do not bear on the inquiry respecting the future 
state. So when Solomon says, " There is no work," etc., " in 
the grave " (Eccl, ix. 10), the context shows that his subject is 



GLASG O W— PRIME. 



3°3 



the works of the present life, of which corporeal death is the 
terminus, while he elsewhere treats of the future judgment as 
another subject (Eccl. xii. 14). In Rev. xiv. .13, of the dead 
who die in the Lord it is said, " They rest from their labors and 
their works do follow them " — that is, their works as sanctified 
men living in the Lord while they lived, and dying in the Lord 
when they died — all the operations that spring out of love, faith 
and new obedience — by no means cease with bodily death. It 
would quite ignore a most important truth respecting one great 
source of heavenly happiness, to call the works a mere me- 
tonymy for the reward. It is a conjecture, unsupported by a 
single example, though the word occurs one hundred and 
eighty-five times in the New Testament. 

The works of the saints, even in this life, are of such a kind 
as all to merge into those of the future. Thus, the services in 
the Lord's temple and tabernacle, and New Jerusalem, described 
in Revelation, chapters vii. and xxi., are so completely of this 
nature that they are popularly interpreted only of the future 
life. Beginning here, they are carried on more fully and actively 
hereafter. 

There is thus abundant room for the most full and glorious 
exercise and expansion of the growing faculties of infants in 
heaven — in fact, for what we might analogically call their celes- 
tial oducation, and for their being abundant in works of blissful 
service. — J. Glasgow, D. D. 

THE DEAD NEAR US. 

" Millions of spiritual beings walk the earth unseen, both 
when we wake and when we sleep." And we believe, with 
many others, that if we were suddenly divested of this mortal, 
we should find ourselves in a vast amphitheatre, reaching to the 
throne of God, filled with spirits, the unseen witnesses, the 
clouds of witnesses with whom we are encompassed continually. 
There is a place where the Most High dwells in light that no 
man can approach, where the darkness of excessive brightness 
hangs over and around his throne, making Heaven, as Heaven 
is not elsewhere in the universe of God. But neither time nor 



304 T & E DEAD. 

place may with propriety be affirmed of spiritual existence. . . 
It is, therefore, scriptural and rational to suppose that the spirits 
of our departed friends are around us by day and night ; not 
away from God: his presence fills immensity; he is everywhere 
present. If an angel or the soul of a saint should take the 
wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost part of the 
sea, there to be with us or with those we love, even there the 
gracious presence of God would dwell, and the sanctified would 
find Heaven as blessed and glorious as in the temple of which 
the Lamb is the Light. — 6". Irenceus Prime, D. D. 



He hath not lived, that lives not after death. 

— Rev. George Herbert, A. M. 

THE DEAD IN CHRIST. 

There are two ideas which greatly prevail, which need only to 
be mentioned to be refuted. The first is, that the dead in Christ 
become angels, and, in tender, loving watchfulness, guard and 
shelter, through sin and sorrow, those whom they love on earth. 
Marvellous are the ministrations of angels. They are sent forth to 
minister to them that shall be heirs of salvation. They direct 
the operations of nature. They guide the thunder and lightning 
and the winds that blow. They rule the earthquake and the 
storm^the pestilence and the plague. They are about our path and 
about our bed. They fill the church with their blessed presence, 
and bear upward the prayers and praises of the faithful, until they 
blend with the unceasing alleluiahs of heaven. They shield our 
tender infancy, and guide the uncertain steps of manhood. 
They cover the hoary head of age with the shelter of their 
wings, and bear the parting soul into the bosom of Abraham. 
But the dead in Christ never become angels. They are a 
different order of beings. " Know ye not," says the Apostle, 
"that ye shall judge angels ? " But the matter needs no proof; 
it is self-evident. As well might you expect that one of the 
lower order of beings around us should be transformed into a 
man. 

The second notion, which is even more widely spread, is that 



BE KO VEN— BERBER T— WESLE Y. 



305 



the dead, being in a state of rest, are, so to speak, in a state of 
spiritual coma. The calmest rest which we have here on earth 
is when we sleep well, and death is called a sleep. And thus 
we think rather of the freedom from care and suffering and 
distress and misery, which is the blessed portion of the dead in 
Christ — their negative condition — and forget that their state 
cannot be one of mere negation. . . . They go from grace to 
grace. There is growth in intellect, growth in knowledge, 
growth in perception, growth in judgment. There is growth in 
patience, because it is a time of waiting. There is growth in 
faith, because the full vision of the eternal glory of the 
Undivided Trinity is not yet vouchsafed. There is growth in 
hope, for the new heavens and the new earth are not, and 
the kingdom in glory is yet to be, when he shall present to 
himself " a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any 
such thing," and the New Jerusalem shall descend " like a bride 
adorned for her husband." The eyes of their understanding 
are ever more and more enlightened, and they know more and 
more clearly the hope of their calling, and the riches of the 
glory of his inheritance in the saints. There is growth in love; 
in it they are more and more rooted and grounded, and are able 
to comprehend still more fully "the length and breadth, and 
depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth 
knowledge, that they may be filled with all the fulness of God." 
This growth is harmonious and unimpeded growth. Here, we 
grow by fits and starts, by ebbs and flows ; here, we grow by 
stumblings and falls and retrogressions ; here, we grow by pain 
and anguish, and distress and misery. There, the sunshine of 
God's countenance ever falls brighter and brighter ; there, the 
Lamb which is in the midst of the throne feeds them and leads 
them unto living fountains, and wipes away all tears from their 
eyes. — Dr. James De Koven. 



The saints who die of Christ possessed, 
Enter into immediate rest ; 
For them no further test remains, 
Of purging fires and torturing pains. 
20 



-3o6 THE DEAD. 

Who trusting in their Lord depart, 
Cleansed from all sin and pure in heart, 
The bliss unmixed, the glorious prize 
They find with Christ in paradise. 

Yet glorified by grace alone, 

They cast their crowns before the throne, 

And fill the echoing courts above 

With praises of redeeming love. — Charles Wesley. 

THE PIOUS DEAD ARE IN HEAVEN. 

That they are in Hades, the unseen world, there can be no 
question. But are they in heaven or in some intermediate 
place ? Many good people still contend that the most pure of our 
departed friends are not qualified at death for the glorious pres- 
ence of Christ in heaven. Consequently, they are detained in 
their intermediate abode until the resurrection of their bodies, 
and then they may be admitted into heaven. 

This unwholesome theory only finds support from tradition, 
not from the divine word. 

Bishop Clark says: " It is really astonishing when we consider 
how widely this doctrine of a separate abode has spread, and 
how long it has prevailed in the Christian Church, that, after all, 
it is found to have so little authority from Revelation." — Man 
All Immortal, p. 189. 

The hypothesis of an intermediate place of the departed, 
forms the foundation of the Roman Catholic dogma of purga- 
tory, for which there would be no ground but for the false inter- 
pretation of the word " Hades." This appellative is not used 
to designate a third place as distinct from heaven or hell, but 
rather " the invisible world, the world to come, the world of 
spirits, eternity." Both Bishop Clark and Professor Vail give 
this interpretation. 

The scripture, usually presented to sustain the doctrine of a 
separate place, is 1 Peter iii. 19, in which Christ is said to have 
gone, and preached to the spirits in prison. These spirits in 
prison are supposed to be the dead, imprisoned in the inter- 
mediate place, into which the soul of the Saviour went at death, 



REV. J. BOWMAN. 307 

that he might preach to them the gospel. But all this is 
groundless. 

The apostle gives us to understand that the same Spirit that 
" quickened " and raised the body of Christ from the dead, moved 
Noah, "a preacher of righteousness," to proclaim the truth of 
God to the antediluvians, " prisoners of hope." Thus the Spirit 
of God " strove " with that rebellious people, " while the ark was 
preparing." The period of this " long suffering" was "a hun- 
dred and twenty years." The " eight souls saved " were not in 
Hades but on earth. 

Again, it is supposed that the term " paradise " indicates an 
intermediate place. It is argued that thus the Saviour is to be 
understood when he said to the penitent thief with him upon the 
cross : " To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." 

Jesus created all worlds before " he took upon him the form of a 
servant," hence it was not necessary for him to be detained in an 
intermediate place until the resurrection of his body, ere he 
could enter heaven. 

Let us see in what sense this word in question is subsequently 
used in the New Testament. In 2 Cor. xii. 1-4, the apostle 
speaks of the " Third Heaven " and "- Paradise " as the same 
identical place where he " heard unspeakable words." 

The word occurs again in Rev. ii. 7 : " To him that over- 
cometh will I give to eat of the Tree of Life, which is in the 
midst of the Paradise of God." Is not Jesus the Tree of Life ? 
Is he not also with his glorified body in heaven, there to remain 
through the endless future? The apostle says (Heb. ix. 24): 
" For Christ is not entered into the holy place made with hands, 
. . . but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence 
of God for us." Yes, Jesus is there " in heaven itself," ready to 
receive the spirits of his people immediately after leaving their 
bodies. Of Stephen it is said:. "He being full of the Holy 
Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of 
God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God." He cer- 
tainly did not expect to find a lodgment in an intermediate place, 
but an immediate reception into the glorious presence of his 
Redeemer. Accordingly he said : " Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit" 



308 THE DEAD. 

This view of the subject must have been entertained by Paul. 
He says: "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be 
absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." He 
had "a desire to depart and be with Christ" Does not the 
apostle in Eph. iii. 15 describe the whole Church of God as 
being at present in heaven and on earth ? But according to the 
view of certain theologians, the great body of the Church is 
neither in heaven nor on earth, but in an intermediate place. 

In Heb. xii. 21-24 we are tQ ld that in the city of the living 
God, dwell not only God himself, the judge of all, and Jesus, the 
Mediator of the New Covenant, and the innumerable company 
of angels, but also " the spirits of just men made perfect," all 
dwelling together in the same holy and happy place. Thus the 
pious dead are in heaven with the angels and the Triune God. 

— Rev. J. Bowman, 

BLESSED ARE THE DEAD. 

Not only the dead are the living, but since they have died, 
they live a better life than ours. ... In what particulars 
is their life now higher than it was? First, they have close 
fellowship with Christ ; then they are separated from this 
present body of weakness, of corrup f "on, of dishonor; then they 
are withdrawn from all the trouble, and toil, and care of this 
present life; and then, and surely not least, they have got death 
behind them, not having that awful figure standing on their hori- 
zon waiting for them to come up with it. . . . They are closer 
to Christ ; they are delivered from the body as a source of weak- 
ness ; as a hinderer of knowledge, as a dragger-down of all the 
aspiring tendencies of the soul ; as a source of sin ; as a source of 
pain ; they are delivered from all the necessity of labor which is 
agony, of labor which is disproportionate to strength, of labor 
which often ends in disappointment ; . . . they are delivered from 
that " fear of death " which, though it be stripped of its sting, 
is never extinguished in any soul of man that lives ; and they 
can smile at the way in which that narrow and inevitable 
passage bulked so large before them all their days, and, after 
all, when they come to it was so slight and small. If these be 



MCLAREN— BINNE Y—PO TTS. 309 

parts of the life of them that " sleep in Jesus ; " if they are fuller 
of knowledge, of wisdom, of love, and capacity of love, and 
object of love ; fuller of holiness, of energy, and yet full of rest 
from head to foot ; if all the hot tumult of earthly experience is 
stilled and quieted, all the fever-beating of this blood of ours 
ever at an end ; all the " whips and arrows of outrageous 
fortune " done with forever, and if the calm face which we 
looked upon, and out of which the lines of sorrow, and pain, and 
sickness melted away, giving it back a nobler nobleness than we 
had ever seen upon it in life, is only an image of the restful and 
more blessed being into which they have passed — if the dead 
are thus, then " Blessed are the dead." — A. McLaren. 

THE WICKED DEAD ARE IN A STATE OF CONSCIOUS SUFFERING. 

The souls of the wicked are not cast into the lake of fire 
until after the resurrection and general judgment. Matt, xxv* 
41 ; 2 Thess. 1. 7-10; Rev. xiv. 10, 11 ; xx. 10-15. 

But they are in a state of conscious suffering as the conse- 
quence of their guilt. Luke xvi. 22-28. 

This will consist in remorse for their misdeeds, and in a sepa- 
ration from those sensual objects on which their hearts have 
been fixed (Luke xii. 19-21); and in a conscious loss of the smiles 
of God, and the joys of paradise. Luke xiii. 28 ; xvi. 26. The 
desires, passions, and sinful propensities all remaining but no 
longer finding gratification, will naturally become more inflamed 
and tormenting before the infliction of positive penalties in the 
day of judgment. Prov. xiv. 32; Luke xvi. 24; Rev. xx. 11, 12. 

— Binnefs Theological Compend. 

HOW OUGHT THESE TRUTHS TO AFFECT US. 

In Parts First, Second, and Third, of this volume, we have seen 
what death does — it destroys the body only ; but it fixes char- 
acter, and ushers the soul into its appropriate state in the eternal 
world — if righteous, into a state of blessedness; if wicked, into 
a state of misery. These things being true, and soon to be 
realized by each of us, how powerfully ought we to be affected 
thereby, and induced so to employ our time and talents, and the 



3io 



THE DEAD. 



means placed at our disposal, that when we walk by sigiw, acid 
not by faith, it may be ours, not to " lift up our eyes in hell," but 
" to see the King in his beauty, and the land that is afar off." 

— Editor. 
THE DEAD AND THE LIVING. 

It is a pleasant thought that when we come to die the people 
will show us respect, that they will gather around our bier, and re- 
ligiously lay our remains away in the earth for the angels to watch 
over till the morning of the resurrection. Perhaps a tear will 
be dropped on our coffin or our grave, and appreciative words 
will be spoken. But would it not be as well if honors were not 
entirely posthumous ; if a part of the love and affection that 
gather around the bier of the dead would encircle the home of 
the living ? 

Kind words spoken in the ear of a living man, woman or 
child, are worth a great deal more than the most complimentary 
utterances over the coffin of the dead. The time to carry 
flowers is when they can be looked upon and handled, when 
their fragrance can be inhaled and their beauty enjoyed ; when 
the attention bestowed will warm the heart and awaken hope. 
Love poured out at family altars, in the social circle, amid the 
struggles and conflicts of life, may lift up the fallen, cheer the 
fainting heart, convert sorrow into joy, causing many a flower to 
spring up and bloom along the rugged pathways of this world. 
Were this done, there would be smiles instead of tears, rosy 
cheeks, where now there are dull and haggard ones, light in the 
place of darkness, and a terrestrial paradise, perhaps, in the 
raging, warring elements of an earthly pandemonium. 



, mk \\% 




A collection, more or less complete, of the various arguments founded 
upon reason, experience and revelation, in support of the 

doctrine of man's continued existence after death. [3HJ 



"For we know that, if our earthly house of this taberna- 
cle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens."— II. Cor. v. 1. 

" Immortality o'ersweeps 
All pains, all tears, all time, all fears — and peals, 
Like the eternal thunders of the deep, 
Into my ears this truth — Thou liv'st forever!" 

(312) 




IMMORTALITY. 

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 

HOUGH this entire volume is little else than an argu- 
ment, or series of arguments, for immortality, especially 
those chapters in Part First in which death is considered 
in relation to the higher nature of man and the future 
world, it affords us pleasure to present the several 
special arguments upon the question in this separate form. We 
grant that through the gospel only, " life and immortality are 
brought to light " — i. e., rendered unquestionably certain ; that 
the arguments founded upon reason and nature are not in them- 
selves absolutely conclusive ; but at the same time, we are not 
of those who think that these minor speculations and inferences 
"yield not a ray of light." They do serve a purpose in confirm- 
ing the wonderful truths of Revelation. It is especially assuring 
and comforting to know that the deductions of ancient philoso- 
phers, guided only by the light of reason ; and the dreams of 
ancient poets, gathering up the traditions of the long ago, are 
all in substantial agreement with what the prophets and evan- 
gelists wrote and spoke when moved by the Holy Ghost. 
Further, we can but regard the testimonies of the dying — those 
plain, calm, matter-of-fact attestations of souls hovering on the 
border-land, between the known and the unknown — as valuable 
corroborative evidence of the reality of the (by us) unseen. 
Moreover, the consciousness of the natural mind, and the re- 
ligious experiences of renewed hearts, cannot be set aside as of 
no moment in their bearing upon the Bible doctrine of life be- 
yond the grave. Nature does not contradict herself, and religion 
never testifies falsely, so that even if God had not taught us in 
his word that absence from the body is presence with the Lord, 
we should yet be constrained to declare with the dying Socrates, 

(3 l 3) 



3H 



IMMORTALITY. 



" Then Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and im- 
perishable, and our souls will truly exist in another world ? " 
[Plato, Phcedo, 106). — Editor. 

GRANDEUR OF IMMORTALITY. 

Who shall imagine Immortality ; or picture its illimitable prospect ? 

How feebly can a faltering tongue express the vast idea ! 

For, consider the primeval woods that bristle over broad Australia, 

And count their autumn leaves, millions multiplied by millions ; 

Thence look up to a moonless sky from a sleeping isle of the ^Egaean, 

And add to those leaves yon starry host sparkling on the midnight numberless 

Thence traverse an Arabia, some continent of eddying sand, 

Gather each grain, let none escape, add them to the leaves and to the stars ; 

Afterwards gaze upon the sea, the thousand leagues of an Atlantic, 

Take drop by drop, and add their sum to the grains, and leaves and stars, 

The drops of ocean, the desert sands, the leaves and stars, innumerable. 

(Albeit, in that multitude of multitudes, each small unit were an age) 

All might reckon for an instant, a transient flash of Time, 

Compared with this intolerable blaze, the measureless enduring of Eternity. 

O grandest gift of the Creator — O largess worthy of a God, 
Who shall grasp that thrilling thought, life and joy forever? 
For the sun in heaven's heaven is Love that cannot change, 
And the shining of that sun is life to all beneath its beams: 
Who shall arrest it in the firmament — or drag it from its sphere? 
Or bid its beauty smile no more, but be extinct forever ? 
Yea, where God hath given, none shall take away, 
Nor_build up limits to his love, nor bid his bounty cease : 
Wide, as space is peopled, endless as the empire of heaven, 
The river of the water of life floweth on in majesty forever. 

—Martin F. Tupper. 

THE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY HAS A CHARM. 

Human curiosity loves to hover round the mysteries of the 
future state of the soul, and many dreamy visions have been in- 
dulged in concerning life hereafter. This curiosity is natural 
and pardonable. It has its source in our innate love of life, and 
our consciousness of immortality. But we ought never to for- 
get that, as human creatures who have but five very imperfect 
senses, through means of which we can acquire knowledge of 
the universe, we occupy as yet a very low place in the infinite 
scale of beings ; and that, therefore, it is as impossible for us to 



ZSCHOKKE—DA VY. 



315 



form a conception of what our spirit will be, and will know, 
when placed amid totally different circumstances, as it is for a 
man born blind to conceive what he would be, and would see, 
were a new sense — i. e. t sight — to be vouchsafed to him, and all 
the influences of the universe were in consequence to rush in 
upon him through a hitherto unknown portal of the mind. We 
must not forget that just as impossible as it is for the human 
spirit, here on earth, to know itself and its essence, just as im- 
possible is it that it should be able to know what, according to 
the nature of its essence, it will be when the dark veil is raised 
which covered it here on earth in the form of a body. Without 
being a disembodied spirit already dwelling in eternity, it is im- 
possible to form correct conceptions of that which lies beyond 
the hour of transformation. Jesus, however, spoke of death as 
a going to the Father, a union with the Deity. He gave us the 
assurance of meeting again in eternity. — Zschokke. 

Ah, surely ! nothing dies but something mourns. — Byron. 

IS NOT INCREDIBLE. 

Even in a moral point of view, I think the analogies derived 
from the transformation of insects admit of some beautiful ap- 
plications, which have not been neglected by pious entomolo- 
gists. The three states of the caterpillar, larvae and butterfly, 
have, since the time of the Greek poets, been applied to typify 
the human being — its terrestrial form, apparent death, and ulti- 
mate celestial destination ; and it seems more extraordinary that 
a sordid and crawling worm should become a beautiful and 
active fly — that an inhabitant of the dark and fetid dunghill 
should in an instant entirely change its form, rise into the blue 
air, and enjoy the sunbeams — than that a being whose pursuits 
here have been after an undying name, and whose purest hap- 
piness has been derived from the acquisition of the intellectual 
power and finite knowledge, should rise hereafter into a state 
of being where immortality is no longer a name, and ascend to 
the source of Unbounded power and Infinite Wisdom. 

— Sir Humphrey Davy. 



3i6 



IMMORTALITY. 



IF AN ERROR, A DELIGHTFUL ERROR. 

But if I err in believing that the souls of men are immortal, 

I willingly err; nor while I live would I wish to have this 

delightful error extorted from me ; and if after death I shall feel 

nothing, as some minute philosophers think, I am not afraid 

lest dead philosophers should laugh at me for the error. 

dcevo. 

OBSCURITY OF THE FUTURE. 

We are strangers in the universe of God. Confined to that 
spot on which we dwell, we are permitted to know nothing of 
what is transacting in the regions above and around us. By 
much labor we acquire a superficial acquaintance with a few 
sensible objects which we find in our present habitation ; but we 
enter and we depart, under a total ignorance of the nature and 
laws of the spiritual world. One subject in particular, when 
our thoughts proceed in this train, must often recur upon the 
mind with peculiar anxiety ; that is, the immortality of the soul, 
and the future state of man. Exposed as we are at present to 
such variety of afflictions, and subjected to so much disappoint- 
ment in all our pursuits of happiness, why, it may be said, has 
our gracious Creator denied us the consolation of a full dis- 
covery of our future existence, if indeed such an existence be 
prepared for us ? 

Reason, it is true, suggests many arguments in behalf of im- 
mortality; Revelation gives full assurance of it. Yet even that 
Gospel, which is said to have brought " life and immortality to 
light," allows us to see only " through a glass darkly." " It 
doth not yet appear what we shall, be." Our knowledge of a 
future world is very imperfect ; our ideas of it are faint and con- 
fused. It is not displayed in such a manner as to make an 
impression suited to the importance of the object. The faith 
even of the best men is much inferior, both in clearness and in 
force, to the evidence of sense ; and proves on many occasions 
insufficient to counterbalance the temptations of the present 
world. Happy moments indeed there sometimes are in the lives 
of pious men ; when, sequestered from worldly cares, and borne 
up on the wings of divine contemplation, they rise to a near and 



BLAIR— RE ID. ^l} 

transporting view of immortal glory. But such efforts of the 
mind are rare, and cannot be long supported. When the spirit 
of meditation subsides, this lively sense of a future state decays; 
and though the general belief of it remains, yet even good men, 
when they return to the ordinary business and cares of life, 
seem to rejoin the multitude, and to reassume the same hopes, 
and fears, and interests, which influence the rest of the world. 

— Hugh Blair. 
UNANSWERED QUERIES. 

If a saved or lost man were to come among us from eternity, 
wc would question him thus : What was it to die ? Did it seem 
like going into a sleep, or were you distinctly conscious ? 
When the soul had left the body, how did you feel ? If you 
went to the place of punishment, what was your experience on 
the journey? Did evil spirits conduct you to the prison of 
woe ? Can you give us any definite conception of the miseries 
of the lost ? Or, if you went to heaven, what were your feel- 
ings on the way ? How many of the celestial inhabitants ac- 
companied you ? How did they appear, and what did they 
say? In what way do spirits convey their thoughts to each 
other ? How did you feel when you entered the city of God ? 
Who met you first — Christ, angels, or your departed friends ? 
Is it possible for you to describe the appearance of the God- 
man ? What is the nature of the glorified body of Enoch and 
of Elijah ? As it respects the blessedness and employment of 
the saved, can you make us to understand the simple truth in 
the case ? What peculiar divine glory fills heaven, and what is 
meant by the vision of God ? Many other questions we might 
ask ; but there is no one to answer them. At the end of all our 
inquiries we have to sigh. Great leading thoughts relating to 
the future state are all that God has favored us with. A degree 
of dimness is meant to cloud that wonderful region of life. 

— Rev. John Reid. 

WHY THE FUTURE IS LEFT IN OBSCURITY. 

Suppose, now, that veil to be withdrawn which conceals an- 
other world from our view. Let all obscurity vanish; let us no 



3i8 



IMMORTALITY. 



longer see darkly as through a glass ; but let every man enjoy 
that intuitive perception of divine and eternal objects which 
would place faith on a level with the evidence of sense. The 
immediate effect of such a discovery would be to annihilate all 
human objects and to produce a total stagnation in the affairs 
of the world. Were the celestial glory exposed to our admiring 
view; did the angelic harmony sound in our enraptured ears; 
what earthly concerns would have the power of engaging our 
attention for a single moment ? All the studies and pursuits, the 
arts and labors, which now employ the activity of man, which 
support the order or promote the happiness of society, would lie 
neglected and abandoned. Those desires and fears, those hopes 
and interests, by which we are at present stimulated, would 
cease to operate. Human life would present no objects sufficient 
to rouse the mind, to kindle the spirit of enterprise, or to urge 
the hand of industry. If the mere sense of duty engaged a good 
man to take some part in the business of the world, the task, 
when submitted to, would prove distasteful. Even the preser- 
vation of life would be slighted, if he were not bound to it by 
the authority of God. Impatient of his confinement within this 
tabernacle of dust, languishing for the happy day of his transla- 
tion to those glorious regions which were displayed to his sight, 
he would sojourn on earth as a melancholy exile. Whatever 
Providence has prepared for the entertainment of man, would be 
viewed with contempt. Whatever is now attractive in society, 
would appear insipid. In a word, he would be no longer a fit in- 
habitant of this world, nor be qualified for those exertions which 
are allotted to him in his present sphere of being. But, all his 
faculties being sublimated above the measure of humanity, he 
would be in the condition of a being of superior order, who, 
obliged to reside among men, would regard their pursuits with 
scorn, as dreams, trifles, and puerile amusements of a day. 

—Hugh Blair, D. D., F. R. S. 

THE FUTURE NOT UNCERTAIN TO FAITH. 

Those who acknowledge no God but a mysterious force, those 
who deny to God personality and thought, and affection and 



FOR TER—HUTTON. 



319 



sympathy, most reasonably find no evidence in nature for a 
future life — when they look in her stony and inflexible face, 
they find all the evidence to be against it. Let such a man 
awake to the fact that God is, that he lives a personal life, that 
nature is not so much his hiding-place as it is a garment of his 
revealing light, that the forces of nature are his instruments and 
the laws of nature his steadying and eternal thoughts, that man 
is made after God's image and can interpret his thoughts and 
commune with his living self, that life is man's school, every 
arrangement and lesson of which points to a definite end, that 
the end is not accomplished here — then not only does there 
spring up in his heart the hope that this life shall be continued 
to another, but this hope becomes almost a certainty. Let now 
God be seen to break forth from his hiding-place, and to mani- 
fest himself in the Christ who conquers death and brings the 
immortal life to light through his rising and ascension, and the 
hope that had been reached as a conclusion of assured con- 
viction is shouted forth in the song of triumph — " Blessed be 
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according 
to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively 
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an 
inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away." 
—President Noah Porter, D. D. y LL. D. 

THE SOUL: ITS VALUE. 

The soul is grander than its creations. However profound 
its works written, or beautiful the pictures printed; however 
stately the structures erected, or life-like the statues chiselled, 
the soul is grander than them all. The soul of Dante, or Shakes- 
peare, or Milton, was sublimer than their poems. The soul of 
an Angelo was nobler than St. Peter's ; that of Mozart diviner 
than his music. The soul of Newton was infinitely superior to 
his wonderful discoveries — yea, grander than the shining worlds 
which he bound together with bands invisible. Yes, the 
soul is superior to all the apparatus of modern inventions 
and discovery — to telescopes and microscopes, steam-engines 
«id electric telegraphs. For these are its creatures — dumb, 



3 20 IMMORTALITY. 

unconscious, perishable matter — while it is conscious, intelli- 
gent, immortal mind. 

How wonderful is this soul, with its vast capacities, hopes and 
fears, joys and sorrows! How, in its aspirations, it overlaps the 
grave, and revels amid the grandeurs of eternity! Can its value 
be estimated ? In what balance can it be weighed ? For what 
can it be bought or sold ? Is there aught on earth, in sea or 
sky, to be regarded as its equivalent ? What shall a man give 
in exchange for his soul ? When we see the Son of God be- 
come incarnate, live among men, submit to weariness and want, 
stand condemned as a criminal, smitten, spit upon, robed in 
mocking vestments, and crowned with thorns ; when we see 
him bending beneath the cross, climb the heights of Calvary, 
and there, outstretched upon the accursed tree, expire in bit- 
terest agony, wondering we exclaim, " O, why this humiliation 
grief, and death of God's Beloved One ? " And the darkened 
heavens, and trembling earth, and risen dead answer, " For the 
soul of man." Here at the cross we learn the value of the im- 
mortal soul. — Rev. William Hutton. 

THE SOUL IS INDEPENDENT OF THE BODY. 

When we close our short careers, some questions that we 
debate as matters of high philosophy will be personal to you 
and to me. As we lie where Webster lay, face to face with 
eternity, and its breath is on our cheeks, there will come to us, 
as it cannot come now, the query whether the relation of our 
souls to our bodies is that of harmony to a harp, or of the 
harper to the harp. The time is not distant when it will be 
worth something to us to remember that they who walk late on 
the deck of the " Santa Maria " have seen a light rise and fall 
ahead of us. The externality and independence of the soul in 
relation to the body are known now under the microscope and 
scalpel better than ever before in the history of our race. Exact 
science, in the name of the law of causation, breathes already 
through her iron lips a whisper, to which, as it grows louder, 
the blood of the ages will leap with new inspiration. Before 
that iron whisper, all objections to immortality are shattered. 



COOK— POTTS. 



321 



If, in the name of physiology, we remove all objections, you 
will hear your Webster when he comes to you and says that a 
Teacher, attested by the ages as sent with a supreme Divine 
mission, brought life and immortality to light. There is no 
darkness that can quench the illumination which now rises on 
the world. No ascending fog from the shallows of materialism 
can put out the sun of axiomatic truth. Ay, my friends, in the 
oozy depths of the pools, where the reptiles lie among the reeds 
in the marshes of materialism, there arises a vapor, which, as it 
ascends higher, that sun will radiate, will stream through with 
his slant javelins of scientific clearness, until this very matter 
which we have dreaded to investigate shall take on all the 
glories of the morning, and become, by reflected light, the bridal 
couch of a new Day, in a future civilization. — Joseph Cook. 

ITS OPERATIONS UNDER DEFECTIVE BODILY CONDITIONS. 

The soul's independence of the body is indicated by its 
present operations under defective bodily conditions. Its high- 
est activities, its profoundest motions appear not to be affected 
by the most imperfect state of the external organs. Destroy an 
organ of sense, and yet the mind continues to reason; the 
imagination will soar, the judgment discriminate, the conscience 
approve or condemn. " What visions of beauty and grandeur 
did the mind of Milton create, after his eye-balls had ceased to 
admit a ray of material light! And would not the melodies and 
harmonies of Paradise have been equally exquisite in his 
imagination, had the poet lost also the organ of sound ? If the 
mind can act with vigor when these two noble organs have lost 
their use, would it not act with equal vigor, if taste, and smell, 
and touch had also disappeared ? " 

It is a matter of experience with persons afflicted with loss 
of hearing that the mental activities not only continue, but in- 
crease, both in strength and volume, as the world of sound is 
shut out. Severed from the illusions of auditory impressions, 
the conceptions become clearer and more vivid, and all the in- 
tellectual faculties seem aroused as the soul is thus more fully 
thrown upon the stern realities of its own being. Were all the 



~ 22 IMMORTALITY. 

media of communications with the external world cut off, wc 
may suppose that the higher powers would be intensified in 
their exercise, though the manifestation of such quickening 
might not appear to the observer. 

If such would be the state of a soul deprived of the organs 
of sense, but still inhabiting its temple of clay, what should hin- 
der it from similar operations when thrown upon its pure spirit 
being ? — The Editor. 

THE SOUL IS IMMATERIAL. 

Body, make what you will of it, be it ever so subtle and 
ethereal, can never be refined into soul. Body is composed of 
parts, infinitely divisible; soul is a unit, incapable of division. 
If I am only body, then at death, when the body is dissolved, I 
am dissolved : I pass into the life of nature, I become a part of 
earth and air and water. Faith in immortality disappears with 
this doctrine. . . . Materialism naturally tends to deny any 
future life. To realize immortality, we must believe in a soul, 
which is our real self, which is a unit, indivisible and indestruc- 
tible, which gives unity to the body while it is in it, and organ- 
izes continually all particles of matter according to its own type. 
We must believe in a soul which is also capable of organizing 
ideas and thoughts ; capable of free movement ; capable of de- 
liberately choosing an end, according to reason, and then going 
forward to it. We must believe in a soul, not the creature, but 
the creator of circumstances, with inexhaustible capacities of 
knowledge and love. Only thus can we realize immortality. 

— James Freeman Clarke. 

THE MIND KINDLED UP AT DEATH. 

To make the argument plain, we say that a single instance in 
which the mind kindles up at the moment of death, and blazes 
out with unwonted intellectual fires, while the body is wan, and 
cold, and helpless, cannot be reconciled with the idea that the 
mind is any part of the material body, and that it wastes and 
dies with it. On the other hand, those cases in which the mind 
appears to waste with the body, and go out like the sun, passing 



LEE— ALGER. 



323 



gradually behind a cloud, deeper and darker, until its last ray is 
lost, can be explained in perfect harmony with the theory of the 
immateriality of the mind, and even its immortality. Does the 
mind fail, as in second childhood — or does it grow gradually 
dim as the body wastes under the influence of disease ? The 
explanation is this: the bodily organs through which the mind 
communicates with the material world, in these particular cases, 
are impaired by age or disease. In many cases of death from 
sickness, the mind appears to waste away, or gradually sink 
into a state of sleep, merely because the will does not determine 
it in a direction to develop itself to the world without. But that 
the mind is there, distinct from the wasting, dying body, is 
clear from the many cases in which the mind, being roused by 
the prospect of heaven, or seized with the terror of impending 
perdition, flashes with the fires of immortality, and sheds a 
living glare as it quits its house of clay and enters upon the 
destinies of the spirit world. This has often been witnessed in 
the dying moments of both the Christian and the sinner. 

— Dr. L. Lee. 
THE SOUL SUPERIOR TO DEATH. 

Physical death is experienced by man in common with the 
brute. But on moral and psychological grounds the. distinction 
is vast between the dying man and the dying brute. Bret- 
Schneider, in a beautiful sermon on this point, specifies four 
particulars. Man foresees and provides for his death : the brute 
does not. Man dies with unrecompensed merit and guilt : the 
brute does not. Man dies with faculties and powers fitted for a 
more perfect state of existence: the brute does not. Man dies 
with the expectation of another life: the brute does not. Three 
contrasts may be added to these. First, man desires to die 
amidst his fellows : the brute creeps away by himself, to die in 
solitude. Secondly, man inters his dead with funeral rites, rears 
a memorial over them, cherishes recollections of them which 
often change his subsequent character: but who ever heard of a 
deer watching over an expiring comrade, a deer-funeral winding 
along the green glades of the forest ? The barrows of Norway, 
the mounds of Yucatan, the mummy-pits of Memphis, the rural 



324 IMMORTALITY. 

cemeteries of our land, speak the human thoughts of sympa- 
thetic reverence and posthumous survival, typical of something 
superior to dust. Thirdly, man often makes death an active in- 
stead of a passive experience, his will as it is his fate, a victory 
instead of a defeat. As Mirabeau sank toward his end, he 
ordered them to pour perfumes and roses on him, and to bring 
music ; and so with the air of a haughty conqueror, amidst the 
volcanic smoke and thunder of reeling France, his giant spirit 
went forth. The patriot is proud to lay his body a sacrifice on 
the altar of his country's weal. The philanthropist rejoices to 
spend himself without pay in a noble cause — to offer up his life 
in the service of his fellow-men. Thousands of generous stu- 
dents have given their lives to science, and clasped death amid 
their trophied achievements. Who can count the confessors 
who have thought it bliss and glory to be martyrs for truth and 
God ? Creatures capable of such deeds must inherit eternity. 
Their transcendent souls step from their rejected mansions 
through the blue gateway of the air to the lucid palace of the 
stars. Any meaner allotment would be discordant and unbe- 
coming their rank. 

Contemplations like these exorcise the spectre-host of the 
brain and quell the horrid brood of fear. The noble purpose of 
self-sacrifice enables us to smile upon the grave, "as some 
sweet clarion's breath stirs the soldier's scorn of danger." Death 
parts with its false frightfulness, puts on its true beauty, and be- 
comes at once the evening star of memory and the morning star 
of hope, the Hesper of the sinking flesh, the Phosphor of the 
rising soul. Let the night come, then: it shall be welcome. And 
as we gird our loins to enter the ancient mystery, we will ex- 
claim, with vanishing voice, to those we leave behind, 

" Though I stoop 
Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud, 
It is but for a time. I press God's lamp 
Close to my breast ; its splendor, soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom; I shall emerge somewhere." 

— William Ronnseville Alger. 



BISHOP EDWARD THOMPSON. 325 

THE VOICE OF NATURE. 

Behind the walls of a dilapidated church is a graveyard, many 
of whose graves are thrown open. In one yet green and un- 
disturbed rests a man who, after a peaceful and prayerful life, 
went through the valley of death fearing no evil. As my heart 
cried out, " My father ! " I felt that the words described more 
than a phantom. 

Passing through the streets, now streets of strangers, and over 
roads much changed, to a magnificent native grove on a sunny 
hill-side, I came to the streets of the new city of the dead. Here 
I was at home. Wandering through carriage ways, and mark- 
ing the names on the monuments, I lived my early days over 
again. The dead are around me, not in their winding sheets, 
but in their loveliest living forms. The aged pastor spake once 
more his words of wisdom, the sufferer uttered anew his tale of 
sorrow, " loving eyes glanced love to love again." " Now there 
is a sound of revelry by night," and anon the sweet flute pours 
forth its plaintive notes beneath the harvest moon. But the 
illusion vanishes ; I am again among the dead. O, with what 
heroic struggles, with what patient endurance, with what repent- 
ant sighs, with what cries of agony, with what hidden griefs, 
what desolated hearth-stones, are these green graves associated ! 
Well do I recollect when my mother, returning from the death- 
chamber of a child of sorrow, drew me close to her breast, and 
told me, with subdued tones, how the broken heart of the suf- 
ferer was healed, and how her parting blessing fell softly on the 
heads of her little ones, and how unearthly whispers passed her 
cold lips, and how, when she ceased to whisper, she gave the 
promised signal that her departing spirit greeted the coming 
angels. There are other scenes that I may not paint. Passing 
to the western limits of the grounds, I sat down on the grassy 
slope to enjoy the surrounding prospect. There, amid a merry 
group, I had gathered wild plums and walnuts ; there I had seen 
the deer start from the bushes, and the Indian rush forth in his 
gigantic pastimes. How changed ! On the right is the thrifty 
valley with its spires ; on the left is the long-drawn valley with 
its variety of pleasing landscapes, and down it rushes the fire- 



326 IMMOR TALITY. 

breathing iron horse, with his cargo of merry travellers, while 
beside it stretches the telegraph wire, thrilling like a nerve with 
the news of the metropolis. Westward rise hills on hills, in 
graceful slopes, till the last green summit melts into the setting 
sun. 

The pastures are clothed with flocks, the fields are covered 
with corn, the houses encompassed with flowers, while here and 
there stand the grand remains of the ancient forest like organ 
lofts, with their thousand feathered pipes ready to pour forth 
notes of praise at the morning hour. 

God ! thou mouldest the earth into forms of enrapturing 
beauty ; " thou visitest it and greatly enrichest it with the river 
of God ; thou preparest them corn when thou hast so provided 
it; thou waterest the ridges thereof ; thou settlest the furrows 
thereof; thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the 
springs thereof; thou crownest the year with thy goodness, and 
thy paths drop fatness." Thou who dost beautify and renovate 
the natural world, hast thou prepared no spring for the moral? 
Is life a mystery ? or a probation and preparation for a better 
state? Almighty Father! where are thy children who made 
this wilderness to blossom as the rose ? our fathers who trusted 
in thee ? our mothers who breathed thy name with their dying 
lips ? Hast thou not folded them to thy loving bosom ? 

1 would not depreciate the light of revelation. Pleasant above 
all things it is to stand in the temple of Christ, and amid sweet 
song and solemn feast to hear of Him who is " the resurrection 
and the life." Pleasant also to stand in the temple of nature, 
with its floor carpeted with green and its roofs fretted with stars, 
and its gallery of mountains charged with heavenly music, and 
while the timepiece of the skies measures off the days, to listen 
to the voices of the reason and the heart speaking of a better 
land. To me the two revelations are in harmony ; the one con- 
firms what the other suggests ; the one completes what the 
other begins. Nature puts angels at the sepulchre to roll away 
the stone ; revelation brings from the grave-clothes the warm 
and living man, calling forth the exclamation : " My Lord and 
my God ! " — BisJwp Edward Thompsoi, D. D., LL. D. 



AR THUR—MAR TENS EN. 



327 



The Hebrew idea of the other world was always a social 
one. They never, as they stood over the corpse of their dead, 
said, as the heathen of later times learnt to say : They are ex- 
tinct, or they are finished, or they are terminated, or they have 
ceased to be. They said : " He is gathered to his fathers." They 
looked across the river. He had become a true Hebrew — he 
had passed over ; but this time, instead of leaving his fathers to 
go out, he had now gone to join his fathers. The great family 
place is on that side of the river — on this side there is but one 
generation ; there are many generations gathering in the ever- 
lasting home of the happy. Let us go to join them, and while 
we are on our way let us serve our generation by the will of 
God.— William Arthur, M. A. 

IMMORTALITY IS THE UNCONDITIONAL DESTINY OF ALL MEN. 

To teach the immortality of all men is by no means to teach 
the eternal blessedness of all. Immortality comes of itself; it 
is the metaphysical conception of man, the attribute which he 
cannot lose. Blessedness is, on the contrary, an attribute or 
destiny to be accomplished and fulfilled, — an immortality rich 
in its contents, divinely replenished ; in other words, eternal life. 
Blessedness, therefore, does not come of itself; it is not merely 
a metaphysical, but a moral and religious destiny, obtained only 
by regeneration and sanctification, by progressive moral and 
religious endeavors. "No man is blessed because his is buried;" 
but every one must mould his own blessedness. That " partic- 
ularism' doctrine of immortality, which has again found advo- 
cates in our day, arises from confounding the distinct concep- 
tions of immortality and salvation. It assumes that those 
individuals alone, who have been made partakers of regeneration 
in this life, receive with freedom the gift of immortality, and 
continue their existence beyond the grave. 

Further, that the power of making man immortal rests in the 
Spirit, which animates and morally perfects the individual, with 
the idea, elevated above the power of mortality, which makes its 
possessors to share its own immortality. Holy and spiritual 
men, therefore, alone can survive the death of the body; natural 






328 IMMORTALITY. 

men fall a prey to death, and perish like other existences in 
nature. But though this view seems to be confirmed by those 
instances which experience exhibits of individuals wholly un- 
spiritual, who seem in a degree to bear the mark of mortality 
and emptiness, and of whom it is not easy to understand what 
claims such a life as theirs can possibly have upon a continu- 
ance of existence beyond the grave ; it certainly arises out of a 
mistake regarding the essence of man's being, the innate destiny 
of all, to live to God, and from overlooking the universality and 
eternal indissolubility of conscience. It involves likewise a 
fatalistic view regarding individuals who, without any guilt of 
their own, have been prevented from receiving the germ of im- 
mortality in this life — a fatalism which falls back upon the old 
Gnostic and Manichsean division of mankind into spiritual men 
and animal men — a distinction which is determined, not as a 
merely transitory, but an original and essential Dualism, de- 
stroying the unity of the race. It is wholly unavailing to call 
in the Scripture doctrine of everlasting death, as if it gave con- 
firmation to this theory of annihilation ; for by everlasting death 
Scripture does not mean absolute destruction, but misery, the 
conscious, self-conscious death. We therefore maintain that the 
unconditional destiny of all men is immortality; but we, at the 
same time, teach that mankind are saved only conditionally, by 
being born again, and made holy. — Dr. H. Martensen. 

MADE FOR IMMORTALITY. 

It cannot be that earth is man's only abiding place. It can- 
not be that our life is a bubble, cast off by the ocean of eternity 
to float a moment upon its waves and then sink into darkness 
and nothingness. Else why is it that the high and glorious 
aspirations which leap like angels from the temple of our hearts 
are ever wandering abroad unsatisfied ? Why is it that the 
rainbow and the cloud come over us with a beauty that is not 
of earth, and then pass off and leave us to muse upon their faded 
loveliness ? Why is it that stars, which hold their festivals 
around the midnight throne, are set above the grasp of our lim- 
ited faculties — forever mocking us with their unapproachable 



FOSS— PAYNE. 329 

glory? And why is it that bright forms of human beauty are 
presented to our view and then taken from us, leaving the 
thousand currents of our affection to flow back in an Alpine 
torrent upon our hearts ? We are born for a far higher destiny 
than that of earth. There is a realm where the rainbow never 
fades, where the stars will be spread out before us like islands 
that slumber on the ocean, and where the beautiful things which 
here pass before us like visions will stay in our presence for- 
ever. 

COMMON SENSE ASSUMES IT. 

We must know what we are before we can determine what 
life should aim at. We cannot survey human nature ab extra, 
for two reasons: first, we are sharers of that nature; and second, 
we have no power to observe it, either in ourselves or others, 
at the dawn of our being. Reflection comes late. We cannot, 
like angels, stand off and look at men; and the power of intelli- 
gent self-introversion is generally reached in later youth, and 
sometimes much later still. Now, what does the common sense 
of the greater part and the better part of our race affirm con- 
cerning human nature and human destiny? This fourfold 
postulate : man is an immortal, religious, fallen, responsible 
being. I know each of these propositions has from time to 
time been stoutly disputed by some individuals; but which of 
them has not been overwhelmingly reaffirmed evermore, with 
million-fold emphasis, by the general judgment, conscience, and 
heart of mankind ? Man is immortal. The Epicureans may 
say, "Let us eat, drink and be merry; for to-morrow we die, and 
are not." Mirabeau may say, " Sprinkle me with perfumes ; 
crown me with flowers, that I may thus enter an eternal sleep." 
Men here and there may doubt or deny immortality, but man as 
such assumes it. — Bishop Cyrus D. Foss, LL. D. 

LIFE IS WORTHLESS WITHOUT IT. 

Once admit that life must end to-morrow, and there is nothing 
of worth in to-day. The life that is must be indissolubly joined 
with that which is to be. The only inspiring light that shines 
in the here is reflected from the hereafter. What value does 



2 30 IMMOR TALITY. 

this stupendous factor add to human life? Infinite, recom- 
pensing Future ! How it answers all our questions, solves all 
our problems, quenches all our doubts, silences all our moans, 
atones for all our ills ! Perfection for life's imperfectness, com- 
pleteness for its incompleteness, harvest for its tearful sowing, 
fruitage for its buds and blossoms, realization of its hopes, final 
success of its seeming failures, triumph of its defeats, righting 
of its wrongs, recovery of its lost treasures, reunion of its severed 
households, reclasping of its parted hands, resurrection of its 
buried joys! 

Blessed eternity ! Magic word, more potent than the philoso- 
pher's stone, giving more than a golden value to every moment 
of time ! Glorious immortality, angel of divinest beauty, cloth- 
ing earth's darkest forms with white robes of light, and shedding 
fadeless lustre on its midnight gloom! 

—President C. H. Payne, D. D. } LL. D. 

THE EGYPTIAN BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY. 

The Egyptian Scriptures contain a common argument. Thus, 
in one chapter we read, " The Osirian (the deceased) lives after 
he dies, like the sun ; for as the sun died and was born yester- 
day, so the Osirian is born; every god rejoices with life, the 
Osirian rejoices as they rejoice with life." In the Litany of the 
Sun is written, " Whoso is intelligent upon the earth, he is in- 
telligent, also, after his death." In another record it is written, 
" Thy soul rests among the gods, respect for thy immortality 
dwells in their hearts." 

As F. Schlegel remarked, "Among these nations of primitive 
antiquity, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not a 
mere probable hypothesis ; it was a lively certainty, like the feel- 
ings of one's own being." The learned Christian advocate of 
Cambridge, Mr. C. Hardwicke, acknowledged the doctrine was 
"quite familiar to the old Egyptians;" though thinking that 
" the simple fact of its existence in the valley of the Nile can 
furnish no legitimate proof of spiritual elevation." . . . 

Mariette Bey, who, as curator of the Cairo Museum, is so ab- 
sorbingly Egyptian, says : "As for Egypt, human life did not 



B ON WICK— SPENCER. 



331 



finish when the soul departed from the body; after combats 
more or less terrible, which put to the proof the piety and 
morals of the deceased, the soul proclaimed just is at last ad- 
mitted to the eternal abode." On one papyrus are the words, 
" His soul is living eternally." The symbol for this is a golden 
heart upon the breast. On every stele, on every funeral inscrip- 
tion, the deceased is described as the ever-living. A sarcophagus 
often bore the words, "Thy soul is living." The phrase, " Happy 
life," is repeatedly found marked on the mummy-cloth, and re- 
fers to the life to come. In the Ritual, or Bible, there are sen- 
tences like these : " I shall not die again in the region of sacred 
repose; " and " Plait for thyself a garland; thy life is everlasting." 
If, according to Carlyle, the belief in heaven is derived from the 
nobility of man, then must the old tenants of Egypt have been a 
noble race, as they seemed to live in the hope of immortality. 

— James Bonwick, F. R. G. S. 



Remove immortality, and what is man ? A distressful dream ! 
a throb — a wish — a sigh — then nothing! But, blessed be Good, 
" life and immortality are brought to light." 

— Ichabod S. Spencer, D. D. 

MAN'S VIEW OF DEATH IMPLIES IMMORTALITY. 

How is it that, having once looked on death, we can for a 
moment forget it? How can we go back to our hopes and 
dreams and labors, when we have understood that they must 
end here, that the most loving eyes must be closed thus, the 
busiest hands so crossed upon the breast — the greatest mind 
become a blank, and human beauty turn in a few brief hours to 
a thing of horror ? Why do we not see the ghastly skeleton at 
our feasts: see him in our streets : hear him in our songs: and 
be so bitterly oppressed by his inevitable coming as to lose all 
hope, and sit in dust and ashes, bewailing the bitter fate of man, 
who, do what he may, can only live to die? 

Greatest of all mysteries is it that we can go about forgetting, 
or seeming to forget, this thing. Nor could we, but for that 
inward consciousness of a life beyond that of this world, greater 



332 IMMORTALITY. 

and better, where the spirit shall take up its work again, and we 
shall learn, as we never can on earth, why we have lived here. 

— M. K. D. 
JEWISH IDEAS OF A FUTURE LIFE 

From various passages in the Old Testament (Gen. v. 22, 24; Isa. 
xiv. 9; Ps. xvii. 15; xlix. 15, 16; Eccl. xii. 7, etc.), we draw the 
conclusion that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not 
unknown to the Jews before the Babylonian exile. This appears 
also from the fact that a general expectation existed of rewards 
and punishments in the future world; although in comparison 
with what was afterwards taught on this point, there was at that 
time very little definitely known respecting it, and the doctrine, 
therefore, stood by no means in that near relation to religion 
and morality into which it was afterwards brought, as we see to 
be the fact often in other wholly uncultivated nations. It was 
in a high degree unpretending and disinterested. And although 
the prospect of what lies beyond the grave was very indistinct 
in their view, and although, as Paul said, they saw the prom- 
ised blessings only from afar, they yet had pious dispositions, 
and trusted God. They held merely to the general promise 
that God their Father would cause it to be well with them even 
after death. Psalm lxxiii. 26, 28, " When my strength and my 
heart faileth, God will be the strength of my heart, and my por- 
tion forever." 

But it was not until after the Babylonian captivity that the 
ideas of the Jews on this subject appear to have become en- 
larged, and that this doctrine was brought by the prophets, 
under the divine guidance, into a more immediate connection with, 
religion. This result becomes very apparent after the reign of 
the Grecian kings over Syria and Egypt, and their persecutions 
of the Jews. The prophets and teachers living at that time (of 
whose writings, however, nothing has come down to us) must 
therefore have given to their nation, time after time, more in- 
struction upon this subject, and must have explained and un- 
folded the allusions to it in the earlier prophets. And so we 
find that after this time, more frequently than before, the Jews 
sought and found, in this doctrine of immortality and of future 



KNAPP— ULHORN: 333 

retribution, consolation and encouragement under their trials, 
and a motive to piety. Such discourses were therefore fre- 
quently put into the mouths of the martyrs in the Second Book 
of Maccabees and the other apocryphal books of the Old 

Testament. 

At the time of Christ and afterwards this doctrine was uni- 
versally received and taught by the Pharisees, and was indeed 
the prevailing belief among the Jews; as is well known from the 
testimony of the New Testament, of Josephus, and also of Philo. 
Tacitus also notices this firm belief of the Jews in the immor- 
tality of the soul. In his history he says, Animas proelio ant 
suppliciis peremptorum cetemas putani. . . . But the Sadducees, 
and they only, boasting a great attachment to the Old Testa- 
ment, and especially to the books of Moses, denied this doc- 
trine, and, at the same time, the existence of the soul as distinct 
from the body. 

But Christ did more to illustrate and confirm this consoling 
doctrine than had been before done among the Jews or any 
other people; and he first gave to it that high practical interest 
which it now possesses. 

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body was common 
among the Jews at the time of Christ and the apostles — vide 
Matt, xxii., Luke xx., Acts xxiii. 6-8. So in John xi. 24, the 
Jewess Martha speaks of the resurrection of the dead as a thing 
well known and undoubted. 

— Prof. George Christian Knapp, D. D. 

THE HEATHEN'S VIEW. 

The thought of another world was not unknown to the an- 
cient Greeks and Romans, but it was for them only one of 
shadows. This world alone was real, alone offered true happi- 
ness; the other was the gloomy, joyless, lower world. Ulysses, 
in Homer, sees the dead as shadows greedily drink the blood 
which for a moment at least restores to them real life, and he 
would rather linger here upon earth in the lowest station than 
be a king among the shades. Men shuddered at the thought 
of that other world. The heathen through life were slaves to 



334 IMMORTALITY. 

the fear of death. " My temples are gray," sings the pleasure- 
loving Anacreon, "and white my head; beautiful youth is gone. 
Not much remains of sweet life. Therefore I often sigh, fearing 
Tartarus, dreadful abyss of Hades. Full of horror is the descent 
thither, and whoever has once gone down there never returns." 
But the less this world fulfilled what it promised, and the more 
its evil and its emptiness were felt, and the spirit of resignation 
was developed, the more was this view reversed. Life in this 
world began to be looked upon as shadowy, and the true life 
was sought first in the life to come. Joy in existence, in the 
beauty and glory of the earth and of human life, disappeared; 
the consciousness of weakness, of the limitations of human 
nature, the sense of the vanity of all earthly things, increased. 
The body was now spoken of as the prison of the soul, and 
death, which Anacreon dreaded as a fearful descent into Tartarus, 
was extolled as an emancipation. "After death," says Cicero, 
" we shall for the first time truly live." How often in the schools 
of the rhetoricians is this theme discussed: Death no evil! How 
often the thought recurs in Seneca, that the body is only an inn 
for the spirit, that the other world is its real home. Indeed, just 
as did the primitive Christians, he calls the day of death "the 
birthday of eternity." 

While, however, the glory of this world faded before the eyes 
of men, the other grew in distinctness and reality ; and more 
than once we meet in literature and in works of art with pic- 
tures of the future life as one of joy, a symposium, a banquet, 
where the souls of the departed rejoice together with gods, 
heroes and sages. Already had Cicero in the Dream of Scipio 
thus described the other life, and Seneca paints it yet more 
vividly. Plutarch delights to contemplate it, and rejoices that 
there " God will be our Leader and King, and that in closest 
union with him we shall unweariedly and with ardent longing 
behold that beauty which is ineffable and cannot be expressed 
to men." No other question so occupied all the profounder 
minds as did the question of immortality ; now they believed 
that the Eastern religions would shed light, for these religions 
revolved wholly about birth and death ; now they knocked at 



ULHORN— CO CKER. 



335 



the gates of the under world with magic formulas, adjuration 
and rites of consecration. But no answer. The state, art, sci- 
ence offering no more satisfaction ; public life affording no longer 
a field for activity ; private life, property, pleasure, life itself, be- 
coming insecure, so much the more did men long for another 
world whose portals still stood closed before them. With what 
power then must have come the preaching of this word : " Christ 
is risen ! The wages of sin is death : but the gift of God is 
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Nothing led more 
believers to Christianity, even from cultivated circles, than the 
sure answer it gave to the question respecting another world. — 
Dr. Gerhard Ulhorn : Smyth and Ropes' translation. 

THE BELIEF OF SOCRATES. 

Socrates was no less earnest in his belief in the immortality 
of the soul, and a state of future retribution. He had reverently 
listened to the intuitions of his own soul — the instinctive longings 
and aspirations of his own heart, as a revelation from God. He 
felt that all the powers and susceptibilities of his inward nature 
were in conscious adaptation to the idea of immortality, and 
that its realization was the appropriate destiny of man. He was 
convinced that a future life was needed to avenge the wrongs 
and reverse the unjust judgments of the present life ; needed 
that virtue may receive its meet reward, and the course of Prov- 
idence may have its amplest vindication. He saw this faith re- 
flected in the universal convictions of mankind, and the " com- 
mon traditions " of all ages. No one refers more frequently 
than Socrates to the grand old mythologic stories which express 
this faith : to Minos, and Rhadamanthus, and ^Eacus, and Tripto- 
lemus, who are "real judges," and who, in the "Place of De- 
parted Spirits," administer justice. He believed that in that future 
state the pursuit of wisdom would be his chief employment, and 
he anticipated the pleasure of mingling in the society of the wise, 
and good, and great of every age. 

Whilst, then, Socrates was not the first to teach the doctrine 
of immortality, because no one could be said to have first dis- 
covered it any more than to have first discovered the existence 



33^ 



IMMORTALITY. 



of a God, he was certainly the first to place it upon a philosophic 
basis. — B. F. Cocker, D. D. 



When death attacks a man the mortal portion of him may be 
supposed to die, but the immortal goes out of the way of death 
and is preserved safe and sound. — Socrates. 

THE ARGUMENTS OF PLATO. 

1. The soul is immortal, because it is incorporeal. There are 
two kinds of existences, one compounded, the other simple ; the 
former subject to change, the latter unchangeable ; one percep- 
tible to sense, the other comprehended by mind alone. The 
one is visible, the other is invisible. When the soul employs 
the bodily senses, it wanders and is confused ; but when it ab- 
stracts itself from the body, it attains to knowledge which is 
stable, unchangeable, and immortal. The soul, therefore, being 
uncompounded, incorporeal, invisible, must be indissoluble — 
that is to say, immortal. 

2. The soul is immortal, because it has an independent power of 
self-motion — that is, it has self-activity and self-determination. 
No arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be 
conceived as the originator of free and voluntary movement. 
Now that which cannot move itself, but derives its motion from 
something else, may cease to move and perish. " But that 
which is self-moved, never ceases to be active, and is also the 
cause of motion to all other things that are moved." And 
" whatever is continually active is immortal." This " self-activ- 
ity," says Plato, " the very essence and true notion of the soul." 
Being thus essentially causative, it therefore partakes of the 
nature of a " principle," and it is the nature of a principle to 
exclude its contrary. That which is essentially self-active can 
never cease to be active ; that which is the cause of motion 
and of change, cannot be extinguished by the change called 
death. 

3. The soul is immortal, because it possesses universal, necessary, 
and absolute ideas, which transcend all material conditions, and 
bespeak an origin immeasurably above the body. No modifica- 



COCKER— YOUNG. 



337 



tions of matter, however refined, however elaborated, can give 
the Absolute, the Necessary, the Eternal. But the soul has 
the ideas of absolute beauty, goodness, perfection, identity, and 
duration, and it possesses these ideas in virtue of its having a 
nature which is one, simple, identical, and in some sense eternal. 
If the soul can conceive an immortality, it cannot be less than 
immortal. If, by its very nature, " it has hopes that will not be 
bounded by the grave, and desires and longings that grasp 
eternity," its nature and its destiny must correspond. 

—B. F. Cocker, D. D. 

THE REWARD OF VIRTUE REQUIRES IMMORTALITY. 

Since Virtue's recompense is doubtful here, 
If man dies wholly ; well may we demand 
Why is man suffer'd to be good, in vain ? 
Why to be good in vain, is man enjoin'd? 
Why to be good in vain, is man betray'd ? 
Betray'd by traitors lodged in his own breast, 
By sweet complacencies from virtue felt ? 
Why whispers Nature lies on Virtue's part ? 
Or if blind Instinct (which assumes the name 
Of sacred Conscience) plays the fool in man, 
Why Reason made accomplice in the cheat ? 
Why are the wisest loudest in her praise ? 
Can man by Reason's beam be led astray ? 
Or, at his peril, imitate his God ? 
Since virtue sometimes ruins us on earth, 
Or both are true, or man survives the grave. 

Or man survives the grave ; or own, Lorenzo, 
Thy boast supreme a wild absurdity. 
Dauntless thy spirit, cowards are thy scorn ; 
Grant man immortal, and thy scorn is just. 
The man immortal, rationally brave, 
Dares rush on death — because he cannot die ! 
But if man loses all when life is lost, 
He lives a coward, or a fool expires. ( 

A daring Infidel (and such there are, 
From pride, example, lucre, rage, revenge, 
Or pure heroical defect of thought) 
Of all earth's mad men most deserves a chain. 

— Edward Young, D. D- 
22 



338 IMMORTALITY. 

Death cannot claim the immortal mind. 

Let earth close o'er its sacred trust, 

Yet goodness dies not in the dust. — W. G. Clark. 

DR. DICK'S ARGUMENTS. 

That distinguished Christian philosopher, Thomas Dick, 
LL. D., who regarded the doctrine of immortality as lying at 
the foundation of all religion, and of all the animating prospects 
which can cheer us in this land of our pilgrimage; without 
which life is a dream, and the approach of death a scene of 
darkness and despair, exhibits, in his " Philosophy of the Future 
State," a condensed, but very comprehensive, view of some of 
the evidences which prove the immortality of the soul. His 
arguments from the light of nature are thus summarized : 

i. The universal belief which this doctrine has obtained among 
all nations — the Egyptians, Persians, Phenicians, Scythians, 
Celts, Druids, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, and the uncivilized 
tribes of Africa and America — whether attributable to a tra- 
dition handed down from man's state of innocency ; to an origi- 
nal impression made upon the human soul by the hand of the 
Creator; to a direct derivation from Revelation; or to the specific 
deductions of natural reason, involves the most important con- 
sequences. The consent of all nations has been generally con- 
sidered a good argument for the existence of a Deity ; so, this 
universal^ belief in immortality ought to be viewed as a strong 
presumption that it is founded upon truth. 

2. We must conclude that the strong desire for immortality, 
implanted in the human breast, will be gratified, or that the 
Creator takes delight in tantalizing his creatures, which is a 
contradiction of every just conception of the Divinity. 

3. Man's capacious intellectual and moral powers and aspira- 
tions demand an uncontracted sphere, and boundless duration 
of time for their complete activity and development; and, there- 
fore, if we would not ascribe imbecility and want of design to 
the adorable Creator, we must admit that he has not thus con- 
stituted man without a destiny corresponding therewith. 

4. The unlimited range of view which is open to the human 
mind throughout the immensity of space and duration, and the 



y. h. potts. 339 

knowledge which may be acquired respecting the distant regions 
of the universe, are strong presumptive evidences of the eternal 
destination of man. 

5. The moral nature of man — his noble sentiments of honor, 
justice and right; his conception of virtue, his active display of 
generosity, and beneficence in seasons of calamity; his fortitude 
in trial ; kindness toward his fellows, even his enemies ; his 
command of his passions ; and his disposition to sacrifice wealth, 
ease, and even life itself, for the good of his country or the wel- 
fare of the race — such features of the mind of man mark its 
dignity and grandeur and indicate its destiny to a higher sphere 
of action and enjoyment. 

6. So, the apprehensions of the mind, and its terrible fore- 
bodings when under the influence of remorse, as in the cases of 
Belshazzar, Tiberius and others, may be considered as intima- 
tions of coming retribution, and even as beginnings of that 
misery and anguish which will be consummated in the world to 
come. 

7. The disordered condition of things in the moral world, as 
compared with the harmony and symmetry of the material, 
argues another state in which perfect moral order will prevail. 
Any other conviction tends to Atheism, for either there is no 
supreme intelligence presiding over the affairs of the universe, 
or else the present state is only a small part of a great and all- 
wise plan. 

8. The unequal distribution of rewards and punishments, 
viewed in the light of God's justice and other attributes, calls 
for a future world in which equity shall be established, and 
a visible distinction made between the righteous and the 
wicked. 

9. There is no proof of annihilation in the world, not a single 
instance appearing in the whole system of material things, and 
it is absurd to suppose that the immaterial, or thinking principle 
of man, will come to an end. 

10. The gloomy considerations and absurd consequences in- 
volved in the denial of immortality are endless and boundless, 
while an acknowledgment of the doctrine unravels the mazes of 



340 IMMORTALITY. 

the divine dispensation and solves every difficulty in relation to 
the present condition of man. 

Dr. Dick conceives that these arguments hang together in 
perfect harmony, and though not so clear and decisive as the 
Scripture argument, they are consistent with the whole system 
of moral things, and, when taken conjointly, ought to have all 
the force of a moral demonstration. — The Editor. 

IMMORTALITY INFERRED FROM THE SOUL'S DESIRES AND POWERS. 

If one were to reason thus : all men have an instinctive desire 
for continued 'existence ; it is evident that our Creator designed 
that all implanted desires should be gratified ; therefore he has 
provided for the means of such gratification, and man is, in the 
divine purpose, destined to existence without end — such an 
argument would not be destitute of force. The natural desire for 
being, and the inference deducible from it, harmonize with the 
intuitions of our moral nature in respect to a future life. And 
more than this, on the theory of extinction at death this desire 
is wholly unaccounted for, and it serves no other purpose than 
to prompt multitudes to prolong a miserable existence. 

The immortality of the soul is inferred from the powers of the 
soul itself, especially from its capacity for indefinite improve- 
ment. It is doubted whether the highest development attain- 
able withiri'the limits of this life is ever actually attained by any 
individual of the race. Some have even said that every man is 
capable of being, even here, greater than any man is. Whether 
this be so or not, it is certain that the masses of mankind die 
with undeveloped faculties, and probably every man feels that 
but for the untoward circumstances of his life, he would be much 
more than he is. The greatest men seem to themselves con- 
scious of undeveloped strength ; to their own thoughts they are 
in the infancy of their being, and certainly, if what some have 
done is at all indicative of what all may do, the whole of our 
earthly life is, to all of us, but the early morning of our existence. 
It is said that three-fifths die in infancy. Now, the argument is 
briefly this : it is not supposable that infinite wisdom would call 
to being capacities for indefinite increase and advancement, and 



RA YMOND— WARREN. 



341 



then speedily return such capacities to non-entity ; the human 
race have capacities that are not, and cannot be, developed in 
this life ; therefore there is a life to come. — Miner Raymond. 

MAN'S PROGRESS POINTS TO ANOTHER WORLD. 

Science discovers that man is adapted for mastery in tins 
world. He is of the highest order of visible creatures. Neither 
is it possible to imagine an order of beings generically higher to 
be connected with the conditions of the material world. This 
whole secret was known to the author of the oldest writing. 
"And God blessed them, and God said unto them : Be fruitful, 
and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it : and have 
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." The 
idea is never lost sight of in the sacred writings. And while 
every man knows he must fail in one great contest, and yield 
himself to death, the later portions of the divine word offer him 
victory even here. The typical man is commissioned to destroy 
even death, and make man a sharer in the victory. Science 
babbles at this great truth of man's position like a little child ; 
Scripture treats it with a breadth of perfect wisdom we are only 
beginning to grasp. 

Science tells us that each type is prophetic of a higher one. 
The whale has bones prophetic of a human hand. Has man 
reached perfection? Is there no prophecy in him? Not in his 
body, perhaps ; but how his whole soul yearns for greater beauty. 
As soon as he has found food, the savage begins to carve his 
paddle, and make himself gorgeous with feathers. How man 
yearns for strength, subduing animal and cosmic forces to his 
will ! How he fights against darkness and death, and strives 
for perfection and holiness ! These prophecies compel us to 
believe there is a world where powers like those of electricity 
and luminiferous ether are ever at hand ; where its waters are 
rivers of life, and its trees full of perfect healing, and from which 
all unholiness is forever kept. What we infer, Scripture con- 
firms. 

Science tells us there has been a survival of the fittest. 



342 IMMORTALITY. 

Doubtless this is so. So in the future there will be a survival 
of the fittest. What is it? Wisdom, gentleness, meekness, 
brotherly kindness, and charity. Over those who have these 
traits death hath no permanent power. The caterpillar has no 
fear as he weaves his own shroud ; for there is life within fit to 
survive, and ere long it spreads its gorgeous wings, and flies in 
the air above where once it crawled. Man has had two states 
of being already. One confined, dark, peculiarly nourished, 
slightly conscious ; then he was born into another — wide, dif- 
ferently nourished, and intensely conscious. He knows he may 
be born again into a life wider yet, differently nourished, and 
even yet more intensely conscious. Science has no limit how a 
long ascending series of developments crowned by man may ad- 
vance another step, and make man iadyy&os — equal to angels. 
But the simplest teaching of Scripture points out a way so clear 
that a child may not miss the glorious consummation. 

When Uranus hastened in one part of its orbit, and then re- 
tarded, and swung too wide, there must be another attracting 
world beyond ; and, looking there, Neptune was found. So, 
when individual men are so strong that nations or armies cannot 
break down their wills ; so brave, that lions have no terrors ; so 
holy, that temptations cannot lure nor sin defile them ; so grand 
in thought, that men cannot follow ; so pure in walk, that God 
walks with them — let us infer an attracting world, high and pure 
and strong as heaven. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews is a 
roll-call of heroes of whom this world was not worthy. They 
were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain 
a better resurrection. The world to come influenced, as it were, 
the orbit of their souls, and when their bodies fell off, earth 
having no hold on them, they sped on to their celestial home. 
The tendency of such souls necessitates such a world. 

— Bishop H. W. Warren, D. D. 

IMMORTALITY INFERRED FROM THE SOUL'S INSTINCTS. 

Nature never deceives. All the instincts, all the faculties 
which are in any of its creatures — there is always something to 
meet them. Nature does not disappoint. If there is a particular 



BINNE Y—BLA IR. 



343 



appetite, there is something to meet it ; if there is a particular 
faculty, there is something to meet it ; if there is a particular 
instinct, there is something to meet it. Well, then, the moral 
aspirations of man, the spiritual instincts, the irrepressible antici- 
pations of which he is capable and which are in him, part of 
himself, faculties and instincts which nature has bestowed, is she 
to play fast and loose with them ? Is she to deceive him with re- 
gard to them ? She deceives in nothing besides. She meets every 
appetite and instinct of inferior creatures, she meets them with 
that which is appropriate; but the highest affections, the noblest 
aspirations, the spiritual instincts — are they all a make-believe ? 
Is nature deceiving and tantalizing man in all that? You take 
an egg out from under the parent bird when she has been sitting 
on it, and it is nearly come to perfection ; you hold the egg in 
your hand : there it is, as it were, a dark world with its single 
inhabitant. You take off the top ; you look in. There in that 
darkness are tiny wings. What are they ? Of what use are 
they there in that little dark world occupied by that individual ? 
Why, they are a prophecy that the creature is intended for a 
world in which there is an atmosphere ; intended to be born into 
an atmosphere, and there is its preparation. These tiny wings 
are a prophecy and preparation for its future condition. Have 
the souls of men no wings ? Are not the spiritual aspirations, 
desires, hopes, anticipations — are not these wings of the spirit ? 
Are they not instincts which are given to us here, which are a 
prophecy to us of the future for which we are intended ? 

— Thomas Binney, D. D., LL. D. 

MAN'S IMPERFECT STATE POINTS TO IMMORTALITY. 

I argue that if the soul were to perish when the body dies, 
the state of man would be altogether unsuitable to the wisdom 
and perfection of the author of his being. Man would be the 
only creature that would seem to have been made in vain. All 
the other works of God are contrived to answer exactly the pur- 
poses for which they were made. They are either incapable of 
knowledge at all, or they know nothing higher than the state in 
which they are placed. Their powers are perfectly suited and 



344 1MM0R TALITY. 

adjusted to their condition. But it is not so with man. He has 
every appearance of being framed for something higher and 
greater than what he here attains. He sees the narrow bounds 
within which he is here confined ; knows and laments all the 
imperfections of his present state. His thirst for knowledge, 
his desires of happiness, all stretch beyond his earthly station. 
He searches in vain for adequate objects to gratify him. His 
nature is perpetually tending and aspiring towards the enjoy- 
ment of some more complete felicity than this world can afford. 
In the midst of all his searches and aspirations, he is suddenly 
cut off. He is but of yesterday, and to-morrow is gone. Often 
in the entrance, often in the bloom of life, when he had just be- 
gun to act his part, and to expand his powers, darkness is 
made to cover him. Can we believe, that when this period is 
come, all is finally over with the best and with the worthiest of 
mankind ? Endowed with so noble an apparatus of rational 
powers, taught to form high views and enlarged desires, were 
they brought forth for no other purpose than to breathe this 
gross and impure air for a short space, and then to be cut off 
from all existence ? All his other works God hath made in 
weight, number and measure ; the hand of the Almighty Arti- 
ficer everywhere appears. But on man, his chief work here be- 
low, he would, upon this supposition, appear to have bestowed 
no attention ; and after having erected a stately palace in this 
universe, framed with so much magnificence, and decorated with 
so much beauty, to have introduced man, in the guise of a 
neglected wanderer, to become its inhabitant. — Hugh Blair. 

ARGUMENT DRAWN FROM MAN'S CREATION AND THE PLEADINGS 
OF THE HEART-LIFE. 

I want to advance an argument that I do not remember to 
have ever seen in any book or to have ever heard. The argument 
is this : that the same reasons which led to the creation of human 
beings will demand their continuance. We are not able to say 
certainly what were the reasons in the .Divine mind that led to 
the creation of man. That creation might have been the out- 
growth of the universal love, the outgrowth of a desire to create 



H. W. THOMAS, D. D. ^45 

beings with whom he might hold communion and raise to the 
realms of his feelings, and ultimately elevate to companionship 
with himself. Whatever those reasons might have been, we 
cannot but conceive that what led to the creation of man would 
in some way seek to perpetuate man's being. It will not do to 
say that God is a mere model-builder, that he will go on age 
after age simply experimenting. When he endows humanity 
with the crown of mind and spirit, when it comes to that point 
where that which is distinctive in man is given and to love for 
his fellow-man, belief in his own immortal destiny, and faith in 
God — in all reason we are bound to the conclusion that the 
cause which led to our creation will continue to influence the 
Divine Being to our preservation. 

We may offer another argument, not new, drawn from the 
pleadings of morality, the pleadings of the heart-life. This 
world is certainly a moral battle-field, where through all the 
centuries truth has been pitted against error, reason against 
passion, justice against injustice. The whole history of mankind 
shows that the battle has been a tedious one. The lines have 
wavered, and at no time has the final result been certain except 
to the eye of faith. Now I would take my stand by the side of 
every patriot who ever loved his country, by the side of every 
martyr who ever died for truth, by the side of every teacher 
who ever taught, by the side of every minister who ever 
preached, by the side of every missionary who ever went forth 
to heathen lands, by the side of those who have wiped away the 
tear of sorrow, who have tried to lift up the fallen, who have sat 
by the bedside of the dying and tried to push back the shadows 
of night — in the name of every one who has ever worked, or 
thought, or suffered for humanity, do I claim that there must be 
some future where the results of this great struggle are to be 
crowned with a compensation beyond what is reached here ; a 
future where the uneven scales of justice in this life may find 
their balance, where man shall be dealt with according to his 
merits. Taking our stand by the heart-life, I ask, in the name 
of reason, is all the longing in human souls to be left out? Is 
all the affection of this world, that has clung about life as the 
vine about the oak, to go for naught ? — H. W. Thomas, D. D. 



346 



IMMORTALITY. 
A VOICE WITHIN US SPEAKS THE WORD. 

O listen, man ! 
A voice within us speaks the startling word, 
" Man, thou shalt never die ! " Celestial voices 
Hymn it around our souls ; according harps, 
By angel fingers touched when the mild stars 
Of morning sang together, sound forth still 
The song of our great immortality ; 
Thick-clustering orbs, and this our fair domain, 
The tall, dark mountains and the deep-toned seas, 
Join in this solemn, universal song. 

O listen, ye, our spirits ! drink it in 

From all the air ! 'Tis in the gentle moonlight ; 

Is floating in day's setting glories ; Night, 

Wrapped in her sable robe, with silent step 

Comes to our bed and breathes it in our ears ; — 

Night and the dawn, bright day and thoughtful eve, 

As one great mystic instrument, are touched 

By an unseen, living hand, and conscious chords 

Quiver with joy in this great jubilee. 

The dying hear it; and, as sounds of earth 

Grow dull and distant, wake their passing souls 

To mingle in this heavenly harmony. — Richai-d Henry Dana. 



Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we 
thirst, God has created liquids to gratify thirst. If we are sus- 
ceptible of "attachment, there are beings to gratify that love. If 
we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely that there are an 
eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that craving. 

— F. W. Robertson. 

THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY. 

A distinct argument for immortality is the earnest hope for it 
which clings to the human soul. What man, unless he has 
made a ruin of life, contemplates annihilation with pleasure ? 
Who, loving life, rejoicing in it with the pure enthusiasm of 
power, can approach close to this idea of extinction without a 
shudder, without a sudden loss of hope, a sense that the con- 
gealing hand of death has already touched him ? The aversion 
of the soul to annihilation is deep-seated and instinctive, liks 



BASCOM—CURR Y— BLAIR. 



34: 



that felt to death itself, chiefly because it sits as warden under 
the deep shadow of mysterious walls, at the entrance of unex- 
plored regions. " More light " is the despairing cry with which 
the unassured soul enters on these explorations. Men hope, it 
may be said, for many things, and those hopes are no predic- 
tions. Yet this argument, which we rest on the hopes of men, 
is none the less a very strong one. Its force is due to our con- 
fidence in the moral -nature of God. A hope which is an in- 
spiration, which is to the soul as morning light, a hope, 
yearning, stronger, clearer, as the spirit gains power, is a 
promise of God, a rational anticipation of his purpose, the fore- 
running indication of his love. It is better than specific words, 
since it lays hold so deeply, so freely of his integrity, the moral 
soundness and gracious favor of God. God knows the human 
heart, knows its best impulses, and will not allow them to be 
misdirected and baffled completely, forever. The very being of 
such a hope is an argument ; it is light and comes from a source 
of light ; it is a soul making answer to its affiliations, the echo 
of time to eternity. To deny this is to impeach the soundness, 
the goodness of God. — John Bascom. 



The instinctive yearnings of the soul carry it beyond its indi- 
vidual self, and call for higher companionships than can be found 
in the world of sense. In their higher operations they appre- 
hend a world that sense cannot detect nor reason comprehend, 
and before the awful sacredness of the Presence thus disclosed, 
the soul instinctively assumes the attitude of worship. And in 
worship man rises into the highest possibilities of his being, and 
at the same time learns to apprehend himself as formed for a 
lofty destiny, and with an infinitely valuable heritage in reversion. 

— Dr. Daniel Curry. 

CONSCIENCE WITNESSES. 

A belief in the soul's immortality has ever prevailed among 
mankind. It is not an opinion that took its rise from the thin- 
spun speculations of some abstract philosophers. Never has 
any nation been discovered, on the face of the earth, so rude 



348 



IMMORTALITY. 



and barbarous that, in the midst of their widest superstitions, 
there was not cherished among them some expectations of a 
state after death in which the virtuous were to enjoy happiness. 
So universal a consent in this belief affords just ground to as- 
cribe it to some innate principle implanted by God in the human 
breast Had it no foundation in truth, we must suppose that 
the Creator found it necessary, for the purposes of his govern- 
ment, to carry, on a principle of universal deception among his 
rational subjects. Many of the strongest passions of our nature 
are made to have a clear reference to a future existence of the 
^oul. The love of fame, the ardent concern which so often pre- 
vails about futurity, all allude to somewhat in which men sup- 
pose themselves to be personally concerned, after death. The 
consciences both of tbe good and bad bear witness to a world 
that is to come. Seldom do men leave this world without some 
fears or hopes respecting it ; some secret anticipations and pre- 
sages of what is hereafter to befall them. — Hugh Blair 

LOVE SPEAKS. 

But the fact of nature is inexorable. There is no appeal for 
relief from the great laws which doom us to dust. We flourish 
and fade as the leaves of the forest, and the flowers that bloom 
and wither in a day have no frailer hold upon life than 
the mightiest monarch that ever shook the earth with his foot- 
steps. Generations of men will appear and disappear as the 
grass, and the countless multitudes that throng the world to-day 
will disappear as the footprints on the shore. Men seldom think 
of the great event of death until the shadow falls across their 
own path, hiding from their eyes the traces of loved ones, whose 
loving smile was the sunlight of their existence. Death is the 
antagonist of life, and the cold thought of the tomb is the 
skeleton of all feasts. We do not want to go through the dark 
valley, although its passage may lead to Paradise ; and, with 
Charles Lamb, we do not want to lie down in the grave, even 
with princes for bedfellows. In the beautiful drama of Ion, the 
instinct of immortality, so eloquently uttered by the death of the 
devoted Greek, finds a deep response in every soul. When 



PRENTICE— B UCKLE. 



349 



about to yield his young existence a sacrifice to his fate, his 
beloved Clemantha asks if they shall meet again, to which he 
replies : 

" I asked that dreadful question of the hills, that seemed 
eternal — of the clear streams that flow forever — of the stars 
among whose fields of azure my spirit has walked. As I look 
upon thy living face, I feel that there is something in thy love 
that cannot wholly perish. We shall meet again, Clemantha." 

— Geo. D. Prentice. 

THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE AFFECTIONS. 

Look now at the way in which this godlike and fundamental 
principle of our nature acts. As long as we are with those 
whom we love, and as long as the sense of security is unim- 
paired, we rejoice, and the remote consequences of our love are 
usually forgotten. Its fears and its risks are unheeded. But 
when the dark day approaches, and the moment of sorrow is at 
hand, other and yet essential parts of our affection come into 
play. And if, perchance, the struggle has been long and ardu- 
ous; if we have been tempted to cling to hope when hope should 
have been abandoned, so much the more are we at the last 
changed and humbled. To note the slow but inevitable march 
of disease, to watch the enemy stealing in at the gate, to 
see the strength gradually waning, the limbs tottering more and 
more, the noble faculties dwindling by degrees, the eye paling 
and losing its lustre, the tongue faltering as it vainly tries to 
utter its words of endearment, the very lips hardly able to smile 
with their wonted tenderness — to see this is hard indeed to bear, 
and many of the strongest natures have sunk under it. But 
when even this is gone ; when the very signs of life are mute ; 
when the last faint tie is severed, and there lies before us naught 
save the shell and husk of what we loved too well, then, truly, 
if we believe the separation were final, how could we stand up 
and live ? We have staked our all upon a single cast, and lost 
the stake. There, where we have garnered up our hearts, and 
where our treasure is, thieves break in and spoil. Methinks 
/hat in that moment of desolation the best of us would succumb, 



35o 



IMMORTALITY. 



but for the deep conviction that all is not really over, that we 
have as yet only seen a part ; and that something remains be- 
hind. Something behind ; something which the eye of reason 
cannot discern, but on which the eye of affection is fixed. What 
is that which, passing over us like a shadow, strains the aching 
vision as we gaze at it ? Whence comes that sense of mysteri- 
ous companionship in the midst of solitude ; that ineffable feel- 
ing which cheers the afflicted ? Why is it that at these times 
our minds are thrown back on themselves, and, being so thrown, 
have a forecast of another and a higher state ? If this be a 
delusion, it is one which the affections have themselves created, 
and we must believe that the purest and noblest elements of our 
nature conspire to deceive us. So surely as we lose what we 
love, so surely does hope mingle with grief. . . . And of all the 
moral sentiments which adorn and elevate the human character, 
the instinct of affection is surely the most lovely, the most pow- 
erful and the most general. Unless, therefore, we are prepared 
to assert that this, the fairest and choicest of our possessions, is 
of so delusive and fraudulent a character that its dictates are not 
to be trusted, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that, inasmuch 
as they are the same in all ages, with all degrees of knowledge, 
and with all varieties of religion, they bear upon their surface 
the impress of truth, and are at once the conditions and conse- 
quence of Our being. — Sir Henry Thomas Buckle. 



Love, which proclaims thee human, bids thee know 
A truth more lofty in thy lowliest hour 
Than shallow glory taught to human power, 
"What's hu7?ian is immortal." — Bulwer. 

LIFE ITSELF POINTS TO LIFE BEYOND. 

There is an element of profound melancholy in human life. 
This melancholy is inseparable from it, inseparable from our 
feeling. It is the frailty and transitoriness of all earthly things ; 
it is the perception of the nothingness of all the possessions and 
enjoyments of this life which diffuses this tone of mourning over 
our life. The king of Israel, who possessed wealth of intellect 
beyond all others, and all the enjoyments of life in a degree 



LUTHARD7 - ADD-ON. 



351 



attained by few, sums up the result of his life in one word: 
"All is vanity." And the Roman emperor, who had com- 
manded a world, exclaimed, when he came to die, " I was 
everything, and have found that everything is nothing." 

And even if it were something — one moment extinguishes all. 
We die ! Have we considered what this means ? They, indeed, 
who know what it means cannot tell us, and we who speak of it 
do not yet know. We feel it, however, beforehand. We com- 
plain of life, yet flee from death. We live hating life, yet full 
of fear to die. And is this to be the end ? Life is ever pointing 
us onward towards the future, each day towards the succeeding 
one ; we are ever hoping from to-morrow what to-day and yes- 
terday have failed to fulfil. However much may have been 
granted us, there is always something left to desire, and that 
something ever appears the chief matter. Thus each day Jirects 
us to the next, until at last the day of death comes. And where, 
then, is the fulfilment of our hopes ? If death is only death, life 
is a cruelty, and hope but irony. Life directs us to a life be- 
yond death; for this earthly life does not satisfy the cravings of 
our spirits, and least of all the cravings of a Christian. 

— Chr. Ernst Luthardt, D. D. 



A solemn murmur in the soul 

Tells of a world to be ; 
As travellers hear the billows roll, 

Before they reach the sea. 

MAN'S PERPETUAL ADVANCEMENT BETOKENS IMMORTALITY. 

How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, 
which is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving 
new improvements to all eternity, shall fade away into nothing 
almost as soon as created ? Are such abilities made for no pur- 
pose ? A brute arrives at a point of perfection which he can 
never pass. Were the human soul thus at a stand in her accom- 
plishments, I could imagine it to drop at once into annihilation. 
But a man can never have taken in his full measure 
of knowledge, has not time to subdue his passions, establish his 
i>oul in virtue, and come up to the perfection of his nature, before 



352 IMMORTALITY. 

he is hurried off the stage. Would an infinitely wise Being 
make such glorious creatures for so mean a purpose ? Would 
he give us talents that are not to be exerted ? capacities that are 
never to be gratified ? How can we find that wisdom, which 
shines through all his works in the formation of man, without 
looking on this world as a nursery for the next ? 

— Joseph Addison. 

MAN'S CHANGES OF FORTUNE INDICATE DISCIPLINE FOR ETERNITY. 

Moses, so distinguished in Egypt by his literature and heroic 
actions, we find an humble shepherd in the land of Midian. 
Here was greatness in exile, and virtue in obscurity ; and his 
wisdom and virtue appear to the greater advantage by his be- 
coming contented and happy with his lot. A man forgets the 
calamities of greatness in the happier toils of humble life. Mak- 
ing the voyage of immortality, and in the same ship, it is of 
little moment whether we stand at the helm, or run before the 
mast. And who can say that by adversity God is not prepar- 
ing the sufferers for true greatness and eternal joy ? 

—Joseph Sutcliffe, D. D. 



Without a belief in immortality religion surely is like an arch 
resting on one pillar, like a bridge ending in an abyss. 

Max Mutter. 

THIS WORLD REPRESENTS ANOTHER. 

The present world seems to be a dim photograph, an indis- 
tinct representation of the world to come. It is no doubt from 
this general correspondence, as much as from the barrenness of 
language, that material imagery is employed to convey an idea 
of spiritual things. Shadows of realities in the world unseen 
and eternal are projected all around us ; and the soul, conscious 
of its supernatural origin and destiny, perceives them and realizes 
the facts they represent. Hence doubtless it is, in part, that the 
belief in a future life is so universal. It is taught by the religion 
of nature, and therefore embraced, in some form, in every creed 
of every faith. — E. Adkins, D. D. 



LIDD ON—L UTHARD T—P O TTS. 353 

THE SOUL DEMANDS A FUTURE. 

The refusal to be satisfied with the banquet of our earthly life 
is an honorable discontent ; it is the instinct of a being who can- 
not suppress the promptings of a higher destiny ; who even on 
the threshold of death must look forward and demand a future, 

— Canon Liddon. 

THE IDEA OF IMMORTALITY ITSELF A PROOF. 

The very existence of the idea of immortality is a proof of 
its truth, for experience shows us only death and transitoriness 
Whence, then, do we get the notion of immortality with uni^ 
versality and certainty ? If our soul did not bear imperishable 
existence with it, it would not have the notion of imperishable- 
ness. We call ourselves mortal. Why? Why else than be- 
cause we know ourselves to be immortal. This is the very 
reason that we are constantly reminding ourselves that we are 
mortal. Consciousness of our immortality is itself a proof of 
its truth. — Dr. Chr. Ernst Luthardt. 

IMMORTALITY PROVEN BY THE TESTIMONIES OF THE DYING. 

We wish to found an argument for immortality upon the dying 
testimonies and death-scenes presented in Part II. of this volume. 
We submit that these voices of the dying cannot but be the 
voices of the living. Lord Bacon observed that " death exempts 
not a man from being, but only presents an alterative." Here 
are hundreds of witnesses to this truth. Here are testimonies, 
coming not only from the lips of dying ministers in the flames, 
on the scaffold, and amid the holy quiet of peaceful homes, but 
from kings, and queens, and soldiers, and physicians, and states- 
men, and guileless children, and even famous infidels, all bearing 
upon the one truth that death is not the end of existence While 
these departing souls had control of the organs of speech, they 
spake audibly to testify that existence was still real, and when 
the voice was stifled in the cold stream, some of them held up 
their hands in token of their yet conscious being. If the soul 
of man were only a breath, if life were only a spark which ex- 
pires when the heart ceases to beat, would there not have been 
23 



354 



IMMORTALITY. 



an experience of the waning flame ; would there not have been 
at least one testimony, in six thousand years, among the thou- 
sands of millions of dying men, going to show a conscious near- 
ness to oblivion ? But there is not one such, not one. If immor- 
tality be not real, the Creator puts it into the hearts of his creat- 
ures, in the most solemn hour of their existence, to testify to a 
falsehood. Men who have scorned all their lives long to speak 
a conscious untruth, are made at the last to speak an uncon- 
scious lie. Can this be so ? If immortality be not real, we 
have a shadow more enduring than the substance, for Socrates, 
Paul, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and other great moral natures, 
have, in their names and histories, an earthly immortality, while 
they themselves, going into eternity, conscious to the last, and 
expecting to live forever, have ceased to be. In a universe of 
harmony there cannot be such discord ; in a world of truth there 
cannot be such contradiction. — Editor. 

BIBLE DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY. 

The Scriptures ascribe to man a kinship with God. Man is 
made in the image and likeness of God. He is brought into 
special relations with God. He is an heir of God, a friend of 
God, and is permitted to hold converse with God. He becomes 
acquainted with the Most High ; is an object of special, divine 
regard ; is-a party to covenants, confirmed by solemn promises. 
This fact of kinship begets confidence, the confidence which 
takes immortality for granted, needing no formal demonstration. 
Hence we see the ancient Hebrew casting himself into the ever- 
lasting arms, knowing that his life is no passing phenomenon, 
like that of tree, or flower, or bird, or beast, but a part of the 
eternal plan, and allied to the life of God himself. This logic 
of the heart prompts to such exclamations as characterize the 
sacred page. The soul pours itself out toward God. — " Never- 
theless I am continually with thee : thou hast holden me by my 
right hand. Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and after- 
ward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee ? 
and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My 
flesh and my heart faileth : but God is the strength of my heart, 



y h. potts. 355 

and my portion forever" (Psalm lxxiii. 23-26). Again, the 
Scriptures teach the unity of man's nature. He is an indivisible 
personality. God forms his body out of the dust of the ground, 
breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and man becomes a 
living soul. As such he is ever recognized. From the begin- 
ning of Genesis to the end of Revelation God is represented as 
the God of the whole individual — body and soul are his. " In 
the body he calls these men his children, and on the body he 
sets the seal of his covenant." This truth is the groundwork of 
many expressed assurances of immortality, both in the Old Tes- 
tament and the New. Job exulted in the prospect of seei?ig his 
ever-living Redeemer upon earth, even though his flesh should 
first turn to corruption and the worms feed upon it. Enoch was 
translated, so that he should not see death. Moses lies down 
upon the mountain summit and dies, the lonely rock his only 
pillow, and the clouds his only shroud. But the winds of heaven 
chant his requiem, while God himself, who had pointed him to 
the promised land, tenderly buries the precious dust. Elijah 
steps into the chariot of fire, and his astonished companion and 
successor has only time to cry out, " My father, my father," ere 
he has mounted to His home in the skies. Paul confirms all 
these records, and rejoices in the personal knowledge that " if 
the earthly house of our tabernacle were dissolved, we have a 
building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens." 

And again, the Scriptures set up a standard of conduct, and 
enforce motives which transcend the bounds of time. Man is to 
fear God and keep his commandments as the summary of his 
duties. This strange requirement is enforced by the immediate 
declaration thai "Gad shall bring every work into judgment, 
with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be 
evil." If faithful unto death, man is promised the crown of life. 
The very purpose of his existence is revealed to be the love of 
God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself. Thus he is 
to inherit eternal life. 

Once more, the plan of redemption, as foretold in prophecy 
and unfolded in the gospel records, brings immortality into the 



356 



IMMORTALITY. 



blaze of clearest light. God takes upon himself man's nature to 
rescue mankind from the ruin of sin. The glory of a past eter- 
nity is veiled, put aside by the second person of the Godhead, 
until the debt is paid, and God can be just and yet the justifier 
of him that believes. Jesus came to save the lost. He dwelt 
upon earth. He mingled with men. He chose disciples. He 
formed associations of the dearest character. He called some 
of his acquaintances "friends." He was a frequent guest in 
some homes, though he had none of his own. John, the loving 
disciple, tells of the love of Jesus. "Jesus loved Mary, and 
Martha, and Lazarus." In these intimate companionships he 
was closely questioned concerning the future. He was candid 
and outspoken, as far as his mission allowed him to go. He 
coined few answers to satisfy idle curiosity, but he confirmed 
the Old Testament doctrines, and cast a flood of light upon ob- 
scure points. Moses, at the burning bush, heard the words, 
" I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God 
of Jacob." Jesus adds the significant expression, " God is not 
the God of the dead, but of the living." He goes with his dis- 
ciples into the mountain top, and is transfigured before them. 
Instantly they see Moses and Elias talking with him. He thus 
actually demonstrates the truth before their eyes, that though 
these men of God had died, they were not dead, but living. 
Once he sakdown with his disciples, and as if he would banish 
every possible doubt from their minds regarding the future, he 
begins to say, " In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it 
were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for 
you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto myself." That settled it. "If it 
were not so, I would have told y *ou" I would not deceive you, 
nor suffer you to be deceived with false hopes. But I was with 
the Father before the world was, and again, I go to the Father. 
You have, therefore, my personal pledge, and I speak what I 
do know, that the spirit life, the eternal world, the abode of 
saints, are positive facts. Soon you shall know it all, for I will 
receive you unto myself. 

Such are only examples of Scripture teaching. The sacred 




CHRIST AT THE HOUSE OF MARY AND MARTHA, 

But one thing is needful ; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall 
not be taken away from her. — Luke x. 42. 



PO TTS— BAXTER. 



357 



writers are all in harmony in their representations of man's duty 
and destiny. From Moses on Sinai to John on Patmos the truth 
runs down along the line that death is not the ultimate end of 
man. He is a partaker of the Divine nature, is the offspring 
of God ; though fallen, is redeemed, and may be saved by faith, 
and live forever with God in heaven. This is the Christian's 
blessed hope, a hope that shall not make ashamed, either in 
time or in eternity. — The Editor. 

RELIGIOUS PROOFS. 

God's hearing and answering prayer in this life, assures his 
servants that he is their true and faithful Saviour. How often 
have I cried to him when there appeared to be no help in 
second causes ; and how frequently, suddenly and mercifully, 
has he delivered me! Such extraordinary changes, beyond my 
own and other's expectations, while many plain-hearted, upright 
Christians, by fasting and prayer, sought God on my behalf, 
have abundantly convinced me of a special providence, and that 
God is indeed a hearer of prayer. I have also seen wonders 
done for others, by prayer, more than for myself: though I and 
others are too much like those who "cried unto the Lord in 
their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses, but they 
forgot his works, and his wonders that he showed them." And 
what were all those merciful answers but the fruits of Christ's 
power, faithfulness and love, the fulfilling of his promises, and 
the earnest of the greater blessing of immortality, which the 
same promises entitle me to ? 

The ministration of angels is also a help to my belief of im- 
mortality with Christ. "They have charge over us — encamp 
round about us — bear us up in their hands — joy in the presence 
of God over our repentance — and are all ministering spirits, sent 
forth to minister to the heirs of salvation. As our angels, they 
always behold the face of our Father which is in heaven. When 
the Son of Man shall come in his glory, all the holy angels 
shall come with him, and he shall send them forth, and they 
shall sever the wicked from among the just." Not only of old 
did they appear to the faithful as messengers from God, but 



358 



IMMORTALITY. 



many mercies does God give to us by their ministry. And that 
they are now so friendly and helpful to us, and make up one 
society with us, greatly encourages us to hope that we are made 
for the same region, employment and converse. They were 
once in a life of trial, though not on earth ; and having over- 
come, they rejoice in our victory. The world above us is not 
uninhabited, nor beyond our capacity and hope; but "we are to 
come to the city of the living God, and to an innumerable com- 
pany of angels." 

Even Satan himself, by his temptations, has many ways 
cherished my hopes of immortality. Few men, I think, that 
observe what passes within them, but have had some experi- 
ence of such inward temptation, as show that the author of 
them is an invisible enemy, and assures us that there are 
diabolical spirits, which seek man's misery by tempting him to 
sin, and, consequently, that a future happiness or misery must 
be expected by us all. 

More especially the sanctifying operations of the Spirit of 
God are the earnest of heaven, and the sure prognostic of our 
immortal happiness. 'Tis a "change of grand importance" to 
man, to be renewed in his mind, his will, and life. It repairs 
his depraved faculties. It causes man to live as man, who was 
degenerated to a life too much like the brutes. Men are "slaves 
to sin " till Christ makes them free. " Where the Spirit of the 
Lord is, there is liberty." If " the love of God shed abroad on 
our hearts " be not our excellence, health and beauty, what is ? 
" Without Christ " and his Spirit, " we can do nothing." We 
cannot quicken, illuminate, or sanctify ourselves. Christ prom- 
ised his Spirit to all true believers, to be in them as his advo- 
cate, agent, seal and mark; and indeed the Spirit here, and 
heaven hereafter, are the chief of all his promises. . . . This 
Spirit Christ also expressly promised, as the means and pledge, 
the first-fruits and earnest of heavenly glory; and therefore it is 
a certain proof that we shall all have such glory. He that 
gives us a spiritual change, which in its nature and tendency is 
heavenly, . . . may well be trusted to perform his word in our 
complete eternal glory. — Richard Baxter. 



GEORGE C. LARIMER, D. D. 359 

IMMORTALITY AS JESUS TAUGHT IT. 

He announces as the most glorious heritage of humanity the 
privilege of access to his presence, the possibility of commerce 
with his Spirit, and of rest in his favor. The world was no 
longer lonely after Christ had spoken. God became a living 
presence everywhere ; his smile rested on all his works, and 
even the shadow of the valley of death became transformed into 
radiance through the sunshine of his countenance. Blessed 
forever be his name who lifted the veil of mystery from the uni- 
verse, and enabled saddened eyes to see beyond a face — the 
Father's face — beaming with tenderness on his creatures ! 

Not as Siddartha did Jesus speak of the soul's eternal destiny. 
No pantheistic subtlety, no consciousless immortality, no "dew- 
drop slipping into the shining sea," was the burden of his high 
discourse. " He spake as never man spake." To all the teem- 
ing millions of this earth, to every human unit — however insig- 
nificant and debased — he proclaimed an existence endless. The 
flight of untold ages, all the vast cycles of a future, with which 
the unmeasured and immeasurable past is but as a watch in the 
fleeting night, and all the convulsions, upheavals, destructions 
and recreations of this complicated universe shall set no limit, 
find no grave, and shall bring neither decrepitude nor death to 
any human soul. Immortality, personal immortality, the reality 
of being, not its dream, is the glad message that fell from his 
sacred lips on the ear of a breathless world. But sad would 
have been his words, though radiant with the hope of life, had 
they been unaccompanied by that grace which "opens the king- 
dom of heaven to all believers." How should the sin-stained 
and polluted hope to enter into the invisible, on whose portals, 
thrones and crowns is written one appalling word, whiter than 
light and fiercer than sun-flames — "Purity!" "Without holiness 
no man shall see the Lord." Frown down the voice of immor- 
tality, let not its whisper excite our fears, let not its breath smite 
the little joy we have on earth. What has a sinner to do with 
immortality? Who craves to live eternally, carrying with him 
the plague of guilt to torment him evermore ? Better nirvana, 
better nihilism, better anything than such an immortality as this, 



360 IMMORTALITY. 

Cruel would it have been in the Master to promise this, more 
fitting to be spoken by a devil than a Christ, and deserving more 
the anathema of a world than its benediction. But his gracious 
lips were not closed forever when he pronounced the word 
"immortal." They parted once more and proclaimed "salva- 
tion." Salvation! Not the salvation Siddartha taught — salvation 
painfully wrought out through many births, in many worlds, by 
each sin-afflicted soul. No ! the salvation Jesus preached, Jesus 
won, and freely gives to all who will accept the gift. This was 
the gospel that he spoke; this was the gospel that thrilled the 
world with joy; and this is still the gospel that conquers human 
hearts, and sweeps onward to crown the race with power. 

— George C. Larimer, D. D. 

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF IT. 

The Christian idea of a future state is not fully expressed by 
a mere abstract belief in the immortality of the soul, but requires 
a redemption and restoration of the whole man. 

According to the ancient creed of paganism, expressed in the 
well-known lines at the commencement of the Iliad, the souls 
of departed heroes did, indeed, survive death; but these souls 
were not themselves; "themselves" were the bodies left to be 
devoured by dogs and vultures. 

The teaching of our Saviour and the apostles, on the other 
•hand, is always that, amidst whatever change, it is the very man 
himself that is preserved ; and if for the preservation of this 
identity any outward organization is required, then, although 
" flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven," God, 
from the infinite treasure-house of the new heavens and new 
earth, will furnish that organization, as he has already furnished 
it to the several stages of creation in the present order of the 
world. 

" If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and 
to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much rather clothe 
you, O ye of little faith?" 

" Ye do err, not knowing . . . the power of God." 

— Dean Stanley. 



JOHN M. MASON, D. D. 36 1 

WHAT WAS TRADITION TO THE HEATHEN IS VERITY TO THE 

CHRISTIAN. 

That our bodies shall die is indisputable. But that reluctance 
of nature, that panting after life, that horror of annihilation, of 
which no man can completely divest himself, connects the death 
of the body with deep solicitude ; while neither these nor any 
other rational considerations ascertain the certainty of future 
being, much less of future bliss. The feeble light which glim- 
mered around this point among the heathen, flowed not from 
investigation, but tradition. It was to be seen chiefly among 
the vulgar, who inherited the tales of their fathers; and among 
the poets, who preferred popular fable to philosophic specula- 
tion. Reason would have pursued her discovery; but the 
pagans' knew not how to apply the notion of immortality, even 
when they had it. It governed not their precepts; it established 
not their hope. When they attempted to discuss the grounds 
of it, " they became vain in their imaginations and their foolish 
heart was darkened." 

The best arguments of Socrates are unworthy of a child who 
has " learned the Holy Scriptures." And it is remarkable 
enough, that the doctrine of immortality is as perfectly detached 
and as barren of moral effect, in the hands of modern infidels, as 
it was in the hands of the ancient pagans. They have been so 
unable to assign it a convenient place in their system ; they 
have found it to be so much at variance with their habits, and 
so troublesome in their warfare with the Scriptures, that the 
more resolute of the sect have discarded it altogether. With 
the soberer part of them it is no better than an opinion ; but it 
never was, and never will be, a source of true consolation in any 
system or any bosom but the system of Christianity and the 
bosom of the Christian. 

Life and immortality, about which some have guessed, for 
which all have sighed, but of which none could trace the rela- 
tions or prove the existence, are not merely hinted, but "are 
brought to light by the gospel." This is the parting-point with 
every other religion ; and yet the very point upon which our 
happiness hangs. That we shall survive the body, and pass 



362 IMMORTALITY. 

from its dissolution to the bar of God, and from the bar of God 
to endless retribution, are truths of infinite moment and of pure 
revelation. They demonstrate the incapacity of temporal things 
to content the soul. They explain why grandeur, and pleasure, 
and fame leave the heart sad. He who pretends to be my com- 
forter without consulting my immortality, overlooks my essen- 
tial want. The Gospel supplies it. Immortality is the basis of 
her fabric. She resolves the importance of man into its true 
reason — the value of his soul. She sees under every human 
form, however ragged or abused, a spirit unalterable by external 
change, unassailable by death, and endued with stupendous fac- 
ulties of knowledge and action, of enjoyment and suffering; a 
spirit, at the same time, depraved and guilty, and therefore liable 
to irreparable ruin. These are Christian views. They elevate 
us to a height at which the puny theories of the world stand and 
gaze. They stamp new interest on all my relations and all my 
acts. They hold up before me objects vast as my wishes, ter- 
rible as my fears, and permanent as my being. They bind me 
to eternity. — John M. Mason, D. D. 



It is far better to be in darkness, and expect the dawn, than 
to be in the light, and to know, or fear, that darkness is coming, 
and light will never return more. — Burrough. 

INFLUENCE OF FAITH IN A LIFE TO COME. 

The expectation of a life after death enables us to see things 
in their true proportions. The future life furnishes us with a 
point of view from which to survey the questions, the occupa- 
tions, the events of this. Until we keep it well before us, we 
are like those persons who have never travelled, and have no 
standard by which to estimate what they see at home. Next to 
positive error, a mistake as to the relative proportions of truths 
is the greatest misfortune. Yet who does not feel, every day 
of his existence, how easily this mistake is made ? Some oc- 
currence which touches us personally appears to be of world- 
wide importance. Some book which we have fallen in with, and 
have read with sympathy, or perhaps have helped to write, 



CANON LID DON, D. D. 363 

seems to mark an epoch in literature or in speculation. Some 
controversy, with its petty but absorbing ferocities, lying far off 
the main current of tempestuous thought which is sweeping 
across our distracted generation, appears, through its present 
relation to ourselves, to touch all interests in earth and heaven. 
Self magnifies and distorts everything; the true corrective is to 
be found in the magnificent and tranquilizing thought of another 
life. As men draw near to the threshold of eternity, they see 
things more nearly as they are; they catch perspectives which 
are not perceived in the days of business and of health. When 
Bossuet lay a-dying, in great suffering and exhaustion, one who 
was present thanked him for all his kindness, and, using the 
court language of the day, begged him when in another world 
to think of the friends whom he was leaving, and who were so 
devoted to his person and his reputation. At this last word, 
Bossuet, who had almost lost the power of speech, raised him- 
self from the bed, and gathered strength to say, not without an 
accent of indignation, " Don't talk like that. Ask God to for- 
give a sinner his sins." 

And surely those occupations should claim our first attention 
which prepare us for that which, after all, is the really important 
stage of our existence. All kinds of earthly duty may indeed 
be consecrated to this work by a worthy motive; but direct 
preparation for the future is made in worship. In the most 
solemn moments which we can spend on earth, we hear the 
words, " The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given 
for thee, preserve thy soul and body unto everlasting life." Nay, 
all Christian worship is, in proportion to its sincerity, an antici- 
pation of the life of the world to come. Worship is the earthly 
act by which we most distinctly recognize our personal immor- 
tality: men who think that they will be extinct a few years 
hence do not pray. In worship we spread out our insignificant 
life, which yet is the work of the Creator's hands, and the pur- 
chase of the Redeemer's blood, before the Eternal and All- 
merciful, that we may learn the manners of a higher sphere, and 
fit ourselves for companionship with saints and angels, and for 
the everlasting sight of the face of God. Worship is the 



364 IMMORTALITY. 

common sense of faith in a life to come ; and the hours we 
devote to it will assuredly be among those upon which we shall 
reflect with most thankful joy when all things here shall have 
fallen into a very distant background, and when through the 
atoning mercy our true home has been reached at last. 

—Cajwn Liddon, D. D. 

THE SUBJECT OUGHT TO ENGAGE OUR ANXIOUS CARE. 

If there were only a bare probability for the opinion that man 
is immortal, it ought to stimulate the most anxious inquiries, 
and awaken all the powers and energies of our souls. But if 
the light of nature and the dictates of revelation both conspire 
to demonstrate the eternal destiny of mankind, nothing can ex- 
ceed the folly and the infatuation of those who trifle with their 
everlasting interests, and even try every scheme, and prosecute 
every trivial object, that may have a tendency to turn aside 
their thoughts from this important subject. 

— Thomas Dick, ^L. D. 

IMMORTALITY COMFORTS THE HEART. 

Now the mystery of my being is explained. I have the clue 
of my immortality. Here I am weak, but then I shall be strong; 
I am poor now, but I shall be rich then ; I am sinful now, but I 
shall be holy "then ; I am disappointed now, but I shall harvest 
fruitions then ; I am weary and heavy-laden now, but then I 
shall lay my head on the bosom of God and rest ; I am sick and 
dying now, but I shall be immortal then ; now I am despised, 
but I shall be somebody, I shall accomplish something ! Eter- 
nity is mine, and it perfects me ! Oh ! my brethren and sisters, 
I cannot express myself, but if you can in some degree measure 
up to this holy fact, how you must long for the hour of the arch- 
angel's majesty. Let the old rusty clock of time tick away the 
minutes and strike out the passing years. We are listening to 
the morning bells of the eternal years. Come, Lord Jesus, and 
come quickly, and let us find our perfection in thee. . . . 
Yes, I am to live in, you are to live in, eternity. A little further 
on and our limbs will grow weary of walking these dusty roads 



BIDWELL—HALL. 365 

of life, our senses will be dulled, our vital force will be abated, 
and at last we shall lie down by the wayside and say to our 
friends : " We are tired out, we can go no farther." And then 
we shall turn our backs upon the things of this world and live 
face to face with eternity. Its breath will fan our cheeks and 
its mighty whisperings will echo through our souls. We shall 
have but one great want then, and that will be God. Just as a 
sick babe wants its mother, so a dying man wants God's bosom 
and God's fatherhood for his rest. — Ira G. Bidwell. 

THE VIEWS OF SCIENTISTS. 

That a future life is possible, no intelligent or candid scientist 
will question. That it is probable, thousands of the best and 
wisest even among scientific investigators have fully agreed. 
That it is a certainty ; millions of the noblest of earth have main- 
tained even with their dying breath. Under such circumstances 
it would naturally be presumed that the true scientist, from his 
paramount desire to acquire information alone, would be the first 
to lend a helping hand to those investigators whose lives are 
devoted to the cause of demonstrating the soul's immortality, 
rather than almost virulently throwing obstacles in their way by 
belligerently belittling every consideration advanced in its sup- 
port. This willing opposition to an assurance of grander scien- 
tific resources, and of a higher plane of intellectuality than earth 
affords, as the only conceivable means by which the knowledge 
of the mysteries of nature can ever be attained by man, proclaims 
in more than words, that such votaries at the altar of science 
are mere pretenders in their great profession and unworthy of 
the name of true philosophers. They are priests who hold the 
temple by force, but their worship is the sham of hypocrisy. 
. . . They thus proclaim to the world their intuitive love of 
ignorance, rather than an inherent desire for knowledge, by dis- 
carding with contempt the only possible hope of knowing more 
of the mysteries of the universe than is afforded by our present 
brief and circumscribed life. Let the truth, then, stand re- 
corded — let it be written in letters of electric light never to be 
effaced — that the real scientist and ideal investigator of nature's 



366 IMMORTALITY. 

problems cannot oppose the Christian philosopher in his efforts 
to establish the truth of the proposition that death does not 
end all, and consequently that the present life, intellectually, 
socially, and spiritually, cannot be all there is of us or for us. 

— A. WilfordHall. 



It is little matter at what hour of the day 

The righteous fall asleep. Death cannot come 

To him untimely who has learned to die. 

The less of this brief life, the more of heaven ; 

The shorter time, the longer immortality. — Dean Millman. 



As the boy aspires to be a man and the clerk a partner, as 
the student hopes for fame and the workman hopes for wealth, 
so we may look upon all our battles and trials here as so many 
steps of the ladder that reaches to our heavenly home, the top- 
most round of which we cannot see. The truths of immortality 
inspire and comfort. They yield foretastes of the coming joy, 
the full fruition of which no human tongue can tell. 

A. E. Kittredge, D. D, 

THE WORLD TO COME. 

If all our hopes and all our fears 

Were prisoned in life's narrow bound ; 
^ If, travellers through this vale of tears, 

We saw no better world beyond ; 
Oh, what could check the rising sigh ? 

What earthly thing could pleasure give ? 
Oh, who would venture then to die ? 

Oh, who could then endure to live? 

Were life a dark and desert moor, 

Where mists and clouds eternal spread 
Their gloomy veil behind, before, 

And tempests thunder overhead ; 
Where not a sunbeam breaks the gloom, 

And not a flowret smiles beneath; 
Who could exist in such a tomb ? 

Who dwell in darkness and in death? 

And such were life without the ray 

From our divine religion given ; 
'Tis this that makes our darkness day ; 

'Tis this that makes our earth a heaven. 
Bright is the golden sun above, 

And beautiful the flowers that bloom, 
And all is joy and all is love, 

Reflected from the world to come. — John Bowring. 




According to Scripture Prophecy, the Gospel must first he preached 
among all nations, and then shall the end come. [367] 



" And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and 
in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with 
perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts 
failing them for fear, and for looking after those things 
which are coming on the earth : for the powers of heaven 
shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of Man 
coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when 
these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up 
your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."— Luke 
xxi. 25-28. 

" Ye visions bright of heavenly birth, 

Ye glories of the latter day, 
Descend upon the fallen earth, 

And chase the shades of night away, 
Bid streams of love and mercy flow 
Through every vale of human woe, 
Till sin, and care, and sorrow cease, 
And all the world is hushed to peace. " 

(368) 




THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 

RELATIONS OF THE MILLENNIUM. 

HE prophecy of the thousand years of Christ's reign oh 
earth is, in and for itself, a true pearl of Christian truth 
and knowledge, because it throws light upon an entire 
series of difficult Christian conceptions. 

In the first place, it mediates an understanding of the 
Last Day, in that it shows how the latter expands into a Divine 
Day of a thousand years, in a symbolical sense, i. e., a specific 
aeon; and thus it also casts light backwards upon the import of 
the days of creation. 

Secondly, it mediates the understanding of a catastrophe which 
is to divide between this life and the life to come, time and 
eternity, the world of becoming and the world of consummation, 
in that it shows how the great and mighty contrast is harmon- 
ized by an aeonic transition-period, in perfect accordance with 
the laws of life and vital development. — Dr. J. P. Lange. 

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MILLENNIUM. 

The word millennium signifies a thousand years. In theology 
it denotes a coming period of the universal spread and preva- 
lence of holiness. The when and how of the millennium, in any 
precise detail, creatures cannot tell. — Bishop Hamline. 

JESUS TO REIGN OVER THE WHOLE WORLD. 

Our conviction is that this same Jesus is to reign over the whole 
world. I shall not enter into the question whether this will be 
accomplished before his second advent, or will be the result of 
24 (369) 



37o THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 

his glorious appearing. I should not like to assert that this con- 
summation will be reached before his advent, for that might 
seem to militate against our duty to watch for his coming, which 
may be at any moment: on the other hand, I would not venture 
to assert that the gospel cannot be universally victorious before 
his coming, because I perceive that this opinion is a pillow fo? 
many an idle head, and is ruinous to the hopeful spirit of mis- 
sionary enterprise. It is enough for me that a wide dominion 
will be given to our Lord at some time or other, and that assur- 
edly his kingdom shall embrace all the nations of mankind. 
The whole earth shall yet be filled with his glory ; the seed of 
the woman shall bruise the serpent's head and clear the world 
of his slimy trail. 

I gather that the kingdom of Christ is to be so extensive as 
to comprehend all mankind, first, because of the exceeding 
breadth of the prophecy of it which was made to Abraham in 
Genesis xii. 3. That is an old covenant promise which refers 
to Abraham as the father of the faithful, and to his one great 
seed, even Jesus, the promised Messiah. Here are the far- 
reaching words, " In thee shall all families of the earth be 
blessed." 

Assuredly they are not as yet all blessed in him to such an 
extent as to exhaust the divine meaning. When God in cov- 
enant promises- a blessing it is no light thing, and therefore I 
am sure that this grand covenant blessing of the nations is some- 
thing more than a name. Though I doubt not that the whole 
earth is to some extent the better because of the coming of 
Christ, and his peace-making death, and the spread of his pure 
faith, yet I cannot believe that multitudes who live and die in 
the thick darkness of ignorance and idolatry are really blessed 
in Christ in such a sense as to make it a covenant blessing. 

How much are Tartary, China, and Thibet blessed by the 
gospel ? There must be something better yet for all the 
families of the earth than anything they have hitherto received. 
All the families of the earth shall yet know that the promised 
seed hath lived and died for them, and some of every kindred 
and tongue shall find salvation in him. 



C. H. SPURGE ON. 37 ! 

Jacob, too, when he spake concerning the Shiloh in Genesis 
xlix. 10, said, " Unto him shall the gathering of the people be." 
By the people iy not meant the seed of Israel, but the nations, 
or the Gentiles ; so the Septuagint and the Syriac understand it, 
and so indeed it is. Jesus, our great Shiloh, sets up the stand- 
ard, and his chosen rally around in ever-growing numbers till 
the dispersed of Babel shall find in him a new centre, and a 
pure language shall be given to them in him. The words mean 
not " gathering " only, but a willing obedience, the fruit of faith 
and the expression of piety. 

Moses, too, in Deuteronomy xxxii. 21, to which passage Paul 
in the Romans so especially refers, speaks of the heathen nations 
when he says, " I will move them to jealousy with those who 
are not a people ; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish 
nation." Truly this is fulfilled in these days when the Gospel 
line hath gone out throughout all the earth, and its words unto 
the ends of the earth. 

When we reach the Psalms we come into the clear light of 
prophecy concerning the kingdom of our blessed Master. Our 
text stands first, and is sufficient in itself : the heathen are to be 
his inheritance, and the utmost bounds of the world are to be 
his possession. Turn to that famous passion psalm, the twenty- 
second. Its pathos with regard to the griefs of the crucified 
One is deep and touching. You see him hanging on the tree, 
a gazing-stock to scoffers, with his tongue cleaving to his jaws, 
and his heart melting like wax in the midst of his bowels ; and 
yet ere the psalm closes the plaintive gives place to the tri- 
umphant, and the dying One cries, "All the ends of the world 
shall remember and turn unto the Lord : and all the kindreds 
of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is 
the Lord's : and he is the governor among the nations." 

How glowing is the language of Psalm lxxii. ! Can we expect 
too great things for our King when we remember the gracious 
words beginning at the eighth verse, " He shall have dominion 
also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the 
earth." These terms include the most barbarous tribes that 
exist, and they specially mention nations which boast that they 



372 



THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND AD VENT. 



were never conquered, such as the untamed rovers of the wil- 
derness, who centuries ago laughed at the Roman power. The 
legions which subdued all other peoples could not conquer the 
sons of Ishmael ; fleet of foot as a hart, swift as a young roe, 
they fled over the desert sands, out of reach of the pursuer; yet 
these shall bow before our Lord, and joyfully pay him homage. 
He will sway his sceptre where sceptre was never owned before ; 
he shall set up a throne where all other authority has been 
laughed to scorn. 

We expected to find, and we are not disappointed in our ex- 
pectation, that Isaiah would be sure to speak concerning these 
things. See what he says in his second chapter. " It shall 
come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's 
house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall 
be exalted above the hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it." 
I can but give samples. The passages abound all through Isaiah 
in which there is the intimation of the general spread of the 
Redeemer's kingdom. 

Nor is Isaiah alone in such prophecies as these. I cannot 
detain you by reading what Ezekiel saith concerning the ever- 
deepening waters which shall carry life to all lands ; and I will 
only mention one word of Jeremiah, because it so peculiarly 
proves that the homage paid by heathen nations to our Lord 
will be that of their hearts ; and that the reign of Christ, what- 
ever it may be else, will certainly be a spiritual reign. Jeremiah 
iii. 17, "They shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord; and 
all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the 
Lord, to Jerusalem ; neither shall they walk any more after the 
imagination of their evil heart." 

Christ will work a heart-change when he shall win the nations 
to allegiance, and this shall lead to a manifest change of life — 
" neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their 
evil heart." 

Daniel, that John of the Old Testament, of course saw more 
clearly than any the coming kingdom of the Anointed One. 
What doth he say in chapter vii. 18? " But the saints of the 
Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom 



SPUR GE ON—ARMITA GE. 



373 



forever, even forever and ever. Until the Ancient of days came, 
and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High ; and 
the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. And the 
kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under 
the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of 
the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and 
all dominions shall serve and obey him." Can anything be 
more positive than this last word ? 

Look how the idols are to be destroyed according to the 
prophet Zephaniah (ii. u), "The Lord will be terrible unto 
them : for he will famish all the gods of the earth ; and men shall 
worship him, every one from his place, even all the isles of the 
heathen." Zechariah says to the same effect (ix. 10), " He shall 
speak peace unto the heathen, and his dominion shall be from 
sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the 
earth ; " (xiv. 2), "And the Lord shall be King over all the 
earth : in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one." 

Lest I should weary you, I forbear to quote any more. To 
me it is evident, beyond all contradiction, that, according to the 
whole run of Scripture, the kingdom of Christ is to extend over 
all parts of the earth, and over all races and conditions of men, 
and therefore I charge you never despair for the grand old 
cause. — C. H. Spurgeon. 

CHRISTIANITY POSSESSES UNIVERSAL ADAPTATION. 

In its universal adaptation to man as man, the religion of 
Jesus differs from all other religions. It is impossible to trans- 
late some other religions out of the district where they origi- 
nated. In those districts they must live and die. But after 
Christianity had first won mighty conquests in its native land, 
its mightiest victories were gained on foreign soils. How could 
you, for example, make the Hindoo religion fit the needs 
of a man who is not a Hindoo ? Now, suppose that a native 
missionary from Hindostan should attempt to convert New York 
to his faith : you must see that when he leaves his home he 
leaves with it all the elements in which his faith can flourish ; 
because he leaves its necessary caste and national peculiarities, 



374 E MILLENNIUM AND SECOND AD VENT 

with all the conventional differences of his own people, as well 
as the historical traditions on which his faith rests. Hindooism 
is for Hindoos, and is not adapted for others. 

Again, how would a Mohammedan missionary succeed among 
the- tribes of the Arctic circle ? In the Orient he measures his 
feasts and fasts, his prayers and praises, by the sun's rise and 
set. But in those frigid zones, where the sun neither rises nor 
sets for months together, he would be ill at ease. His religion 
can no more be transported there than the priest of sunny 
Greece could have taken his from the zephyrs of the enchanted 
grove, or the poetry of perfumed forests, or the lays and lutes 
of Olympus, to the snow-huts of Labrador. But can you name 
a clan or tribe, an ingle or nook, from pole to pole, where you 
cannot preach acceptably the story of the loving Man dying on 
the tree for the salvation of sinners ? That story takes you out 
of the local and conventional, and leads you into the inner life 
of humanity and divinity. And hence it melts the heart in the 
snow-hut, and makes it beat quicker; it nerves the effeminate 
Asiatic to high daring and self-sacrifice; it soothes the fierce 
cannibal of New Zealand into a nurse of humanity, and it exalts 
the pigmy Laplander to the altitude of a redeemed man. Chris- 
tianity knows nothing of race, nor of the national, of the local 
and geographical. It has no local features, and therefore there 
is nothing in Its nature to prevent its becoming the universal 
religion. It contains in itself every moral and spiritual truth 
which man can imagine or desire. No man can devise any real 
soul-want which it does not anticipate and meet, because it deals 
with principles and not rules — is a life and not a system. It 
enforces the old claim, " Happy the man whose life is as good 
as his principles," because this makes them of the same cloth. 
Then, beside all this, there is nothing temporary in the provis- 
ions of Christianity, while it purposely knows quite as little of 
constitutional temperaments. Personal peculiarities and indi- 
vidual distinctions are no obstructions to its free exercise. The 
morose, the agile, the misanthrope, the gay, the impulsive, the 
phlegmatic, the civilized and the barbaric, are all included in its 
common hope and life. — TJiomas Armitage, D.D. 



CO OK— WHED ON. 2 75 

GOD'S GULF-CURRENT FLOWS ON. 

Christianity at this hour reads her Scriptures, and lifts up her 
anthems, in two hundred languages. One-half of the mission- 
aries of the globe may be reached from Boston by telegraph in 
twenty-four hours. God is making commerce his missionary. 

It is incontrovertible that it was predicted years ago, that a 
chosen man called yonder out of Ur of the Chaldees should be- 
come a chosen family, and this a chosen nation, and that in this 
nation should appear a chosen Supreme Teacher of the race, 
and that he should found a chosen church, and that, to his 
chosen people, with zeal for good works, should ultimately be 
given all nations and the isles of the sea. In precisely this order 
world-history has unrolled itself, and is now unrolling. No man 
can deny this. No man can meditate adequately on this with- 
out blanched cheeks. What are the signs of the times but 
added waves in this fathomlessly mysterious gulf-current ? We 
know it began with the ripple we call Abraham. It is now al- 
most as broad as the Atlantic itself. What Providence does, it 
from the first intends to do. We see what it has done. We 
know what it intended. It has caused this gulf-current to flow 
in one direction two thousand, three thousand, four thousand 
years. Good tidings, this gulf-current, if we float with it! — . 
good tidings which are to be to all peoples ! A Power not our- 
selves makes for righteousness. It has steadily caused the fittest 
to survive, and thus has executed a plan of choosing a peculiar 
people. The survival of the fittest will ultimately give the world 
to the fit. Are we, in our anxiety for the future, to believe that 
this law will alter soon ? or to fear that he whose will the law 
expresses, and who never slumbers nor sleeps, will change his 
plan to-morrow, or the day after? 

On this day of jubilee, let us gaze on this gulf-current, and take 
from it heart and hope, harmonious with the heart of Almighty 
God, out of which the gulf-current beats only as one pulse. — 
Joseph Cook. 

CONDITIONS OF HEATHEN SALVATION. 

We assume the headship of Christ over the human race, 
placing on the basis of his atonement all mankind under a 



3;6 



THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 



regimen of just and merciful probation, suited to the present 
nature and state of our humanity, cognizing all the shades of 
human life, circumstances and character, and adjusting with ab- 
solute accuracy the retribution of reward or penalty to the case. 
We assume the universality of the atonement, and that millions 
may be saved by its means who never heard the name of the 
Propitiator. We assume the universality of the dispensation of 
the Spirit. We assume the universal possession of the faculties 
of reason inferring a Creator from the creation, a conscience 
furnishing the dictates of right and wrong. The reason may 
not reveal a Creator in the fulness of his attributes, nor even 
prevent the worship of a God through finite symbols and images, 
which the Scriptures, given for the very purpose of maintaining 
the pure idea of the Deity, prohibits as idolatry, under severest 
penalty, especially to the chosen race, whose special mission 
was, the preservation of the pure idea for the development of 
future ages. The conscience may not furnish an absolutely ac- 
curate code of ethics ; but it furnishes principles which are 
relatively lo the individual right, and safe in the eye of God for 
him to follow. If, under the guidance of that reason, he follows 
the dictates of that conscience, the man, though absolutely 
wrong on many points, will, under our gracious dispensation, be 
right so far as responsibility and future destiny are concerned. 
Such a man will act under many a sad delusion and commit 
many things intrinsically wrong ; but the saving fact is, that he 
acts with a purpose which wants but the light of truth in order to 
his being truly right. In such a case, though there is not the 
reality of Christian faith and righteousness, yet there are two 
things, namely: I. What we will call the spirit of faith ; and 
2. The purpose of righteousness. Where these two exist in 
the man, under any dispensation, he is justified through the atone- 
ment and accepted of God. — D. D. Whedon, D. D. 

THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF CHRISTIANITY ARE ALREADY GREAT. 

Panoplied with the might and power of the Divine Comforter, 
the infant church sprang at once into the very midst of the arena 
of conflict with the philosophies, the mythologies, the idolatries, 



L. X. DUNN, D. D. ^yy 

the superstitions, and the wrongs of the world, and with its 
mighty spiritual weapons began to pull down the strongholds 
of the kingdom of darkness. Persecuted, hated, imprisoned, 
butchered, as were its members, yet their numbers increased, 
and " the word of God mightily grew and prevailed." " But if 
the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was 
glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly be- 
hold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance ; which 
glory was to be done away; how shall not the ministration of 
the Spirit be rather glorious ? " 2 Cor. iii. 7, 8. But great and 
glorious as were the triumphs of the early church, the present 
day is witnessing scenes which are only equalled, but scarcely 
surpassed, by them. The dawn of the nineteenth century wit- 
nessed the most enlarged preparations for the speedy conversion 
of the world to Christ. Organizations began to be multiplied 
for the concentration of the piety, the beneficence, and the labors 
of the church. And as its operations were enlarged, and its con- 
victions of duty were intensified, divine Providence was opening 
one door after another before its wondering eyes, until now the 
whole world is open to the messengers of the gospel. These 
organizations were born in the midst of the revival which be- 
gan in the eighteenth century, and were baptized with the same 
Spirit who inspired the triumphs of the apostolic age. And 
under these mighty agencies which have been called into requi- 
sition, whole districts of the earth have been evangelized and 
Christianized. The inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands have 
been reclaimed from superstition and barbarism, and the last 
relics of their former idols and idolatrous practices have almost 
totally disappeared. Their large and flourishing churches have 
not only become independent and self-supporting, but, in turn, 
are sending out missionaries for the conversion of the islands of 
the sea to Christ. 

The Fiji islanders, from idolatry, brutality, and cannibalism, 
have been brought under the influence of the gospel, and have 
sat down at the feet of Jesus, " clothed and in their right mind." 
More recently still, the island of Madagascar, where hundreds 
of the followers of Jesus formerly sealed their testimony with 



373 



THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND AD VENT. 



their blood, and had furnished a martyrology which, in many 
instances, was equal to that of the early years of the church, 
has been brought under the power of the gospel. Its idols 
have been publicly burned, its bloody altars have been over- 
thrown, its temples have either been deserted and destroyed or 
else converted into houses for Christian worship, and its queen 
has become, in a sense at least, a nursing mother to the church. 
In hyperborean regions, as well as on the banks of the Ganges 
and the Irrawaddy ; in Africa and China, in Turke)/ and in Hin- 
dostan, and, indeed, in most of the languages and dialects of 
the world, there are tongues which speak the Saviour's praise. 
But not only so ; while this mighty baptism has been upon the 
church, and its forward movements have been crowned with 
such signal success, directly or indirectly traceable to the same 
influence is the great work which has been wrought in the 
cause of human liberty. England has emancipated the millions 
of her slaves ; Russia has lifted up thirty millions of serfs from 
their degraded and enslaved condition ; and America, in the 
midst of a baptism of blood and tears, struck the manacles 
from the limbs of four millions of slaves, and has since asserted 
their manhood and granted to them the elective franchise. 

" The light ! the light ! it breaks ; 
Light on the chain of the slave, 
The light of God on the laborer's home, 
Light on the martyr's grave." 

— L. R. Dunn y D. D. 

HEATHENISM GIVING WAY. 

There is every sign of the dissolution of heathen systems. 

Max Muller not only declares that " heathen nations are 
shrinking," but gives it as the " strongest evidence of the death 
of a religion that it has ceased to send forth missionaries to 
propagate its ideas." Missionaries and travellers tell us that thus 
judged, paralysis has already supervened. In China, India, 
Japan, and nearly all heathen lands, the temples are falling into 
decay. Effort to extend their faith has ceased. Fill men's 
brains with the ideas of a personal infinite God and a future of 



LEECH— HURST. 



379 



eternal life, thus, to quote another, adding an inch to the girth 
of their crania, and all false gods forthwith tumble from the 
ruling of those brains. The outgoings of a Christian civilization. 
such as the newspaper, the telegraph, the steam and street car, 
the factory, and a thousand other cojoined influences, combine 
to tear the flimsy livery from the deceiving jugglers of the idols 
and open the souls of men to receive the freedom given by the 
Christ. The New Japan, its government but just now as ex- 
clusive as that of China, first tore the hidings from around the 
spiritual Mikado and sent him out a brother to his kind. To- 
day it is publishing the books of Moses and of the Great Teacher 
Jesus. It is supporting Christian schools. Confucius rapidly 
moves to lay his sacred books at the feet of the great Supplanter 
of Nazareth. Budh and Brahm are not delaying. The entire 
brood of false deities shall ere long expire without lament by 
the millions they have so long deceived. The chief danger is, 
that faith in even these false systems should collapse before the 
church of the Lord is prepared for the moral care of their 
votaries. More terrible to these nations than the breaking of 
northern dykes, when Netherland lies locked in sleep, would be 
the engulfing of moral death sure to overwhelm from the out- 
flow of their own depraved and benighted souls and Christless 
contact with an outlying world. — George V. Leech, A. M. 

SIN IS POWERFUL BUT WILL BE CONQUERED. 

Sin is a fixed, unyielding power. It is not a tender plant that 
a worm may gnaw away in a night, or a child's hand may tear 
up. Its roots are deep and firm. The power of sin is old. It 
is universal. In every land, on every sea, in all ages, among all 
peoples, its power is revealed. If you wish to know this, you 
have only to attack it to realize the power it has. The lion 
behind the bars may not alarm you, but let him out among the 
people, unfettered, and you are helpless. Attack any of the 
great ethnic faiths — Buddhism, with its three hundred millions, 
or Islamism, with its one hundred and eighty millions, and you 
are convinced of the magnitude of that pov/er of superstition 
by which so large a part of the race is enslaved. 



3 8o 



THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 



All honor to those noble souls who, in self-denial, obloquy 
and suffering, are heroically waging a conflict with error. They 
are inspired with another thought, which is properly coupled 
with the foregoing. 

There is an overpowering force which can and will conquer 
sin. It is Christianity. The gospel nowhere has yielded. It 
commands to-day more confidence than ever, and enters into 
more languages than any religion. At Pentecost its followers 
were numbered by a few hundreds. Its founder had died, not a 
sceptred king, grasping in death, as Charlemagne, the symbol 
of royalty, but, amid the abuse and taunts of Jew and Roman, 
stretched upon the cross. It had no protection from law, no 
place in literature, it owned no churches. But in 320 a Chris- 
tian emperor sat upon the throne, and the world felt its power, 
as a trembling Felix before a heroic Paul. The church of Christ, 
if called to pass again through the age of martyrdom, would, I 
believe, be as unflinching in maintaining the truth, or in sealing 
her testimony in blood, as in the days of Ridley and Latimer, 
or in the earlier age of Perpetua and Felicita, when rich and 
poor, bond and free, were one in a common loyalty to the truth 
and in pouring out their blood in its defence. 

—Bishop J. F. Hurst, D. D. } LL. D. 

<- THE DECLINE OF SUPERSTITION. 

The decline of superstition during the present century is a 
remarkable and significant fact. A more general and important 
change never passed so rapidly over society. It is not possible 
for the present generation to conceive of the posture of their 
immediate ancestors in respect to superstitious beliefs, because 
these were merely traditional vagaries, of which history gives 
no adequate account. In America and England, fifty years ago, 
the great mass of the people were under the dominion of the 
most baseless, absurd and perverted notions pertaining to almost 
everything in nature. The temporal fortunes of life were sup- 
posed to be affected by the season of the year in which they 
were born, and by many similar prognostics. The signs of the 
zodiac were a prime factor in matters of hygiene, agriculture, 



ARNOLD— ELLICO TT. 



38> 



and the management of animals. The moon exercised a mys- 
terious influence over the growth of crops and the human facul- 
ties. Dreams possessed immense significance in foreshadowing 
good and evil, and their interpretation was regarded as a science 
of paramount interest. Little occurrences, like the spilling of 
salt, the dropping of a table-fork, the crowing of a cock on the 
door-sill, or the floating of a stem in a cup of tea, are instances 
of omens which existed by hundreds, and which were remarked 
on all occasions. Fortune-telling found a place in every social 
entertainment. And, worst of all, witchcraft was commonly be- 
lieved in, and various methods of detecting and banishing witches 
were practised. The horseshoe was thrown into the churn, 
animals suddenly appeared and vanished, which were meta- 
morphosed into witches. Men went at midnight to see the cattle 
on their knees on Christmas eve, and trembled at portents in 
the heavens, presaging war or pestilence. It seems strange to 
one who grew up in such an atmosphere of superstition, and 
whose memory is replete with such trivialities, that it has been 
so soon dissipated before the advancing knowledge of this cen- 
tury. We regard this decay of superstition as a triumph of 
truth and reason of momentous importance. Superstition is the 
faith of ignorance and the worship of fear, which hold the soul 
in bondage. The quality of man's religious spirit and acts has 
been transformed and ennobled by its removal. The thought 
and conversation which was employed in these trivialities is now 
released to nobler and better pursuits. The absolute dominion 
of God, and the self-controlling responsibility of man, is seen 
and felt. The spirit of enquiry, which assumes that all mystery 
is a shadow which our ignorance fails to penetrate, and which is 
resolvable by reason or faith, is prompting man to indomitable 
physical research, and securing him religious simplicity and 
stability.— J. M. Arnold, D. D. 

NUMERICAL PROGRESS. 

Listen to a few cold figures. What was the number of the 
church on the day of Pentecost? It was 3,000, but some seventy- 
years later, at the end of the first century, the church had in- 



382 THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 

creased to some 500,000 souls ; which number had increased by 
the days of Constantine — glorious days for the church of Christ 
— to 10,500,000. Then look on, and I do not fear even to look 
into the dark middle ages when the church of the West separated 
itself from and anathematized the church of the East. At this 
time the 10,000,000 Christians of the time of Constantine had 
become 30,000,000, which again by the time of the glorious 
Reformation had grown to 100,000,000, and at the present time 
there are on the face of the globe no less than 450,000,000 of 
Christians. Now, then, may we dare to look forward ? The 
population of the world, as nearly as we can estimate it, is now 
1,400,000,000, and, following the same rate of progress as in 
the past, the number of Christians will also go on increasing in 
an equal, if not a greater, ratio, and the gross number will have 
become mighty almost beyond computation. The statistics 
which I have quoted may seem curious, but they will bear the 
test of inspection, and are such as to fill us with hope. 

—Bishop C. J, Ellicott, D. D. t LL.D. 

THE ULTIMATE TRIUMPH. 

We cannot despair of success. What though the dreary 
winter of the world's moral life may have lasted far longer than 
the eager hopes of the church anticipated ? What though the 
thick darkness, of an apparently eternal night may have hung 
for centuries over the vast majority of our race? We do not, 
we cannot, despair. Not suddenly — not in a moment — was it 
reasonable to expect that the bright and blessed change would 
come. When the morning dawns and struggles with the gloom 
of night, how doubtful, how gradual is the progress of the con- 
flict ! Silently, and we know not when, the . darkness begins to 
melt in the east, but heavy clouds may still resist the splendor 
of the sun. Gleams of the coming brightness shoot up the 
heavens, their lines of glory quiver along the horizon, and pro- 
phesy the approaching day ; but the mists still hang gloomily 
in the skies, and threaten to bring the hours of darkness back ; 
and yet the ultimate victory of the light is secure. When the 
winter begins to feel the thrilling influence of spring, for how 



R. W. DALE. 383 

long a time is the triumph hindered and delayed ! Bitter winds 
by day and frosts by night prolong the desolation, and retard 
the life which is struggling into faint and tender beauty. Even 
when in more southern lands the wild flowers have begun to 
blossom, and the trees are robed in the sweet, fresh beauty of 
their young foliage, travel northwards and the ground is hard 
and bare, and the forests are standing in the grim nakedness of 
winter still. But there is no uncertainty about the issue;* the 
winds become more genial, and fruitful rains begin to fall, and 
the heat of the sun becomes more intense, and the silent pres- 
ence of spring steals upwards from the warmer south across the 
fields of the north, and at last the whole earth is bright with 
beautiful blossoms as far as the eye can see; along the course 
of rivers and wide-spreading plains, and even up the gaunt 
sides of rugged mountains, there is the luxuriant and living 
green. 

Yes; Christ is a light to lighten the Gentiles — and the glory 
of the upper heavens shall yet scatter and chase away the dark- 
ness which still broods sullenly over the earth; and the new, 
divine life, long repressed, shall yet reveal itself in fair and 
wonderful and lavish fertility; the very deserts of the world 
shall be covered with a moral wealth and beauty of which the 
brightest spring-time and the richest autumn are poor and pale 
symbols, and of which the loveliness of Paradise was only a 
dim and imperfect promise. The songs which filled the night 
with joy when Christ was born shall be heard again, with sweeter 
music, deeper harmonies, and more exulting raptures; all heaven 
shall come down to earth — thrones and dominions, and princi- 
palities and powers, seraphim and cherubim, and shining armies 
of angels — to celebrate, with sounding trumpets and golden 
harps, and loud acclamations and tumultuous strains of triumph, 
the final victory of Divine love over human sin, and the restora- 
tion of our race to God. We are not "mad" in exulting in 
these happy and confident expectations. God's mercy is mightier 
than all the powers of the world, the flesh, and the devil. 
We — fanatics, as men may deem us — "speak the words of truth 
and soberness." — R. W. Dale. 



3 84 THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 

WHEN NATIONS SHALL LEARN WAR NO MORE. 

Will war die ? War that claimed the immortality of Death 
and Sin? Yes, and Death, and Sin, and Satan will live to weep 
over the grave of their renowned confederate. And such a 
funeral! methinks I see it now. The earth, sea and sky are vi- 
brating with joyous emotion, and there is a gladness in the 
heart of every living thing. The dust of fourteen thousand mil- 
lions of human beings, butchered in the battle-field, stirs into 
life and form; and up-springing from coral graves and caverns 
fathomless in the sea, myriads of human skeletons leap upon 
the land and clap their bony hands in triumph, and around the 
globe runs the exulting gibber of " the sheeted dead," that the 
great Destroyer has fallen. And yonder, methinks, there rolls 
a sea, full fifty fathoms deep — a dark, dead, salt sea of tears, fed 
by the outlets of a hundred thousand millions of human eyes 
that wept at War's doings. And now a wailing wind, a monsoon 
of widows' and orphans' sighs, moves over the briny deep, and 
lifts its bitter waves in sympathy with the world's jubilee. And 
Labor, wan, dejected Labor, at whose veins the monster fed, 
runs up and down the green hills exulting to see the curse re- 
moved. And red-handed Slavery, the eldest thing of the leprous 
Beast, lets go from her palsied hands the bonded millions she 
held with iron grasp, to throw their fetters into the grave of 
War, and shout for joy with all the sons of God, that man is 
free. And all beings that live and love the face of man, the 
face of nature; that love to look up into the pure, peaceful sky, 
and on the peaceful sea, and fields, and flocks ; that love to com- 
mune with the silent harmonies of the great creation, and listen 
to the music of unreasoning things, all these fill the heavens 
with one jubilate ! that the great Cannibal is dead — the great 
Man-Eater, that, whetting its appetite on the flesh of Abel, ate 
up nearly half the human race, and enslaved the rest to cater to 
the appetites of its wolfish maw. — Elihu Burritt. 



When I think of the promise of a millennium in our own time 
m our own civilization, my thought rests and fastens upon the 
promise, "A little child shall lead them." — R. S. Siorrs, D. D. 



VINCENT— L ONGFELL O W—AR THUR. 385 

THE COMING CHRISTIAN MANHOOD. 

There is growing up in the advanced Sunday-school of the 
present a flower which shall bear glorious blossoms fifteen years 
hence : the Christianity of the Future. Far more thoroughly 
than ever in the past a generation of young people are receiving 
an education in the word of God. The Sunday-school of to-day 
is training those who are the destined citizens and Christians of 
to-morrow. The sons and daughters who are storing their 
minds and strengthening their characters with Scripture truths 
will grow up into a full-orbed type of Christianity which will be 
in advance of their parents', and fuller, rounder, and more com- 
plete than any which the church has in the past developed. 
With such citizens as are being nurtured in our Sunday-school 
to control the State, and such Christians to become pillars in 
the church, both Church and State will stand secure and strong 
through all the centuries to come. — Bisliopjfohn H.Vincent, D.D. 



Were half the power that fills the world with terror, 
Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts, 

Given to redeem the human mind from error, 
There were no need of arsenals and forts. 

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred! 

And every nation that should lift again 
Its hand against its brother, on its forehead 

Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain. 

Down the dark future, through long generations, 
The echoing sounds grow fainter, and then cease ; 

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, 

I hear once more the voice of Christ say " Peace ! " 

Peace ! and no longer from its brazen portals 

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies ! 

But beautiful as songs of the immortals, 

The holy melodies of Love arise. — H. W. Longfellow. 

SERVING THE FUTURE. 

I have said you cannot serve the past, but you can serve the 
future. This generation contains all that are coming. Suppose 



386 



THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT 



that David, some- day in his wanderings, when he had got upon 
the goodly mountain, and sat down weary at the eventide under 
some great cedar, the pomegranate blossoms blooming before 
him, and with his great poet eye looked out across the gleaming 
Mediterranean away to yonder sun that was going to lose itself, 
and between him and the sun saw a Syrian sail mysteriously 
flickering on the borders of he knew not what — suppose he had 
said to himself, " What is there, there away beyond the waters, 
in the strange realm where the sun los'es himself at night-time?" 
and suppose that some angel had then been commissioned just 
to lift up the veil and permit him to cross the Mediterranean, 
then the continent of Europe, then across another sea, until 
away in the cold and foggy seas of the north he beholds some 
islands lying, and sees the people of some distant generation. 
Up there spring towers and spires. God's Sabbath day sounds 
upon the land, and there they come, fathers and mothers, boys 
and girls, in the streets by thousands and tens of thousands, 
crowding to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 
In families, and tribes, and multitudes, they lift up their Sabbath 
song, and proclaim the God of Israel, "Bless the Lord, O my 
soul," ringing up to the heavens in a language David never 
heard. He might have said, "Am I to serve these distant gen- 
erations?" Yes; he served your mother many a time, and my 
mother; he has served you, and he has served me. He has been 
serving us this day, and we have sometimes heard the hundredth 
psalm, the words of David in one age, the music of Luther in 
another age, the language of our mothers, and our fathers, and 
our own voices, all uniting, binding the angels of the nations 
together in the one great work of praising God. So serve your 
own generation, and you serve every other. Serve the men and 
women now living, and you serve all that are yet to come. 
Working for this moment, you are working for all future times; 
bringing one poor boy to Christ, bringing one lost girl back to 
the Saviour, you are working for unborn generations, and the 
influence of your action will never be lost. 

— William Arthur, M A, 



BISHOP W. X. NINDE, D. D. 387 

BIBLE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST'S SECOND COMING. 

(Contributed to this volume.) 

I shall proceed, in as brief a manner as possible, to state the 
more prominent grounds upon which the large majority of 
Christians in our time believe that the second coming of Christ 
will not precede, but follow, the latter day glory of the church. 
We believe there never has been a time, as yet, when our 
Saviour could have made his appearance suddenly and unex- 
pectedly. Certainly he could not have so come in the primitive 
age, because certain occurrences, which would require consider- 
able time for their fulfilment, were matters of apostolic predic- 
tion. And is it not equally clear that certain results, very 
explicitly recognized in Scripture as preceding the coming of 
the Lord, are as yet unrealized ? 

For instance, the gospel is to be universally diffused prior to 
his advent. "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached 
in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the 
end come." — Matt. xxiv. 14. Here is a distinct event, clearly 
foretold by our Lord himself as necessarily ante-dating his 
coming. Taken in connection with other prophecies, it seems 
clear that the preaching of the gospel implies more than its 
simple announcement among all nations — rather its general dif- 
fusion and prevalence. Now this result has never, as yet, been 
attained. A large majority of the human race are yet unvisited 
by Christian missionaries. And many lands which have been 
reached are far from permeated by the blessed teachings of the 
gospel. But if it be true that God's word shall not return unto 
him void, but shall accomplish that whereunto he sends it, then 
may we not believe that the gospel, wherever preached, will 
ultimately be successful, and Christianity become universal, and 
that this is implied in our Saviour's prediction ? The latter-day 
glory of the church, therefore, when " the earth shall be full of 
the knowledge of God," must precede the second coming. 

Again, the Scriptures seem clearly to indicate that previous 
to the coming again of our Lord, the church will be perfected — 
her numbers full and her sanctification complete. This is plainly 
taught in those numerous symbolical passages which speak of 



388 THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 

the church as the bride — the Lamb's wife. Joseph Perry, who 
lived in the early part of the last century, and who was himself 
a pre-millenarian, states this point with great aptness and force : 
"It is certain," he says, "that when Christ personally comes 
from heaven, will be the time of the open solemnization of the 
marriage glory between him and the spouse; and if so, then the 
bride must be ready against that time ; as it is expressed in this 
text, 'And his wife hath made herself ready,' which cannot be 
if they are not all converted before Christ comes. For this, I 
think, is undeniable, that by the wife, bride, or spouse of Christ, 
the whole elect must be understood. How can it be thought 
of Christ, when he comes from heaven to celebrate the marriage 
feast between himself and his people, that he should have a lame 
and imperfect bride, as she must be if some should be with 
Christ in a perfect glorified state, and some of his mystical body 
at the same time in an imperfect condition?" 

Now the current doctrine among pre-millenarians is, that the 
number of the elect will be by no means complete at the coming 
of the Lord — that his coming will give a new impulse to the 
work of conversion, so that multitudes shall be added to his 
mystical body subsequently, thus presenting the very incongru- 
ous condition of things delineated so forcibly in the above cita- 
tion from Perry. How much more reasonable and Scriptural 
that view seems, which regards the mystical body of Christ as 
complete, both in numbers and holiness, before the manifestation 
of the divine spouse; which, of course, involves the priority of 
the millennial glory. 

As bearing upon this point, and confirming the view we have 
taken, we cite that important passage recorded in Acts iii. 19-21 : 
" Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be 
blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the 
presence of the Lord, and he shall send Jesus Christ, which 
before was preached unto you ; whom the heaven must receive 
until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath 
spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world 
began." Here it is declared that that glorious restoration of all 
things which forms the burden of prophecy must be accom- 



BISHOP W. X. NTNDE, D. D. 389 

plished before our Lord's appearing. " Whom the heaven must 
receive," and retain, " until the times of restitution of all things." 
Whatever this restitution may refer to, it certainly would seem 
to debar such a state of things as pre-millennialists teach will 
follow the advent and characterize the millennial period. Sin 
and death will still exist, and toward the close will occur that 
fearful outbreak of organized wickedness, the rebels being de- 
voured by fire from God out of heaven. Such a state of the 
world cannot reasonably be conceived as following these times 
of restitution. The apostle's phraseology, taken in connection 
with the majestic sweep of prophecy, indicates a consummation 
of the most radical and comprehensive description. The resti- 
tution of all things indicates, to my mind, the universal and 
lasting triumph of the gospel — the final destruction of sin and 
death, and the discharge of Christ from his office of intercessor. 
Until then the heaven must retain him ; consequently his coming 
cannot precede the millennium. I am aware that our pre-mil- 
lenarian brethren offer a very different exegesis of this passage, 
regarding it as one of the strongest supports of their doctrine. 
They make the times of refreshing the same period with the 
times of restitution, and Christ's coming the efficient cause of 
both, an exposition which, in my judgment, fails most signally 
to convey the meaning of the apostle. 

One event, of marked importance, we are explicitly assured 
by St. Paul, must precede the Lord's coming — the revelation of 
the Anti-Christ. The Man of Sin is very thoroughly charac- 
terized by the apostle, and the prevailing impression is that the 
description points unmistakably to the Roman papacy. 

This view, however, is by no means universal. It is ques- 
tioned whether this hypothesis is consistent with the statement 
that the mystery of iniquity was even then working. Moreover, 
can the papacy, with its admitted abominations, be justly said 
to realize all the conditions of that terrible portraiture ? Again, 
the plain inference from the passage is, that the Man of Sin is 
to be destroyed soon after his revelation. Yet the obnoxious 
features of the papacy have been conspicuous since the time of 
Gregory the First. May we not be mistaken in supposing that 



3 9 o THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 

the Anti-Christ of this passage refers to the papacy ? Is it not 
more convenient to take it as referring to no institution at all, 
but to some particular individual, whose coming, after the work- 
ing of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, shall 
occur at some stage in the future ? The ready assumption that 
the Man of Sin is already manifest in the papal throne may 
accord more with our Protestant prejudices than with truth 
and charity. If neither the papacy nor the paganism, impious 
and persecuting, of the ancient world answers the description, it 
can hardly be claimed that he has his realization anywhere in 
history. Hence, the prophecy still seeks its fulfilment, and 
may, with great propriety, as I think, be identified with that of 
the twentieth chapter of Revelation, which refers distinctly to 
post-millennial times. 

Post-millenarians find another support for their view in what 
seem clear prophetic intimations that the kingdom of Christ 
will reach its culmination of power and glory by a gradual pro- 
cess. The opposing belief is that the moral condition of the 
world will wax worse and worse until suddenly the Lord shall 
be revealed from heaven, taking vengeance on his enemies, and 
establishing his universal sway. In that remarkable series of 
parables recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, our 
Lord is distinctly impressing the character of his kingdom. 
He compares it, in one instance, to a grain of mustard seed ; in 
another to leaven, evidently teaching that it was destined to 
spread by the gradual processes of growth and diffusion. The 
oft-quoted second Psalm, whose value in this connection can 
scarcely be exaggerated, clearly indicates the same fact. The 
application of the language of this Psalm which the rejoicing 
disciples make in the third of Acts, referring some of its pre- 
dictions to occurrences transpiring in their own day, shows that 
the Son was already seated, as a king, upon the holy hill of 
Zion, awaiting the fulfilment of the glad promise : "Ask of me 
and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the 
uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." This promise 
is hasting to its realization. Again, what could more clearly 
indicate the agents and methods by which his kingdom is to 



BISHOP W. X. NINDE, D. D* . 391 

spread and triumph than the language of Christ's final commis- 
sion ? "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 
Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing 
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
commanded you ; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the 
end of the world." Mark the force of separate clauses in this 
remarkable passage. The apostles are to enter upon the stu- 
pendous work of Christianizing all nations. Not simply pro- 
claiming the gospel for testimony, but making disciples of all 
nations — baptizing and teaching them, not the mere outlines of 
Christian truth, but under the evident supposition of their ulti- 
mate universal success, they are to teach them to observe all 
things whatsoever their divine Master had commanded them; 
and then follows that cheering and most significant promise ; 
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 
As there is no dispute about the end of the world here, syn> 
chronizing with the coming of Christ, it would seem that this 
great work of Christianizing all nations is to continue until oui 
Saviour's advent ; and by plain implication is to cease then, the 
great result having been achieved. How utterly inconsistent 
with all this is that view which depreciates the missionary work 
of the church — which insists that the world will grow worse 
and worse, and that its conversion will only be accomplished 
through our Lord's corporeal manifestation. 

The visions of Nebuchadnezzar, and Daniel of the image and 
of the wild beasts, which have been brought in upon both sides 
of this controversy, are familiar to all. I think they teach, 
most clearly, that the kingdom of the God of heaven was set 
up in the days of those kingdoms referred to ; that it did indeed 
destroy them, and that symbolically this little stone which was 
cut out without hands is gradually becoming the great mountain 
which at last shall fill the whole earth. 

But what, it is asked, shall be done with the numerous passages 
in the New Testament which speak of the second coming as so 
imminent ; as an event for which the church is to evidently long 
and most carefully watch, if the conspicuous lengthened period 



392 



THE MILLENNIUM AND SECOND ADVENT. 



of the millennium is to prevent it? I frankly confess I cannot 
tell. Nor do I see how my perplexity would be relieved were 
I to change ground and become a premillennarian. Were we liv- 
ing in the primitive period of the church, when these solemn 
predictions and admonitions were freshly uttered, I should have 
but one interpretation. I should assume, at once, their more 
obvious and literal teaching. I should say, surely, "this genera- 
tion shall not pass before all these things shall be fulfilled;" but 
the passing years have pursued their flight till they have multi- 
plied to many centuries, and still the Lord delayeth his coming. 
Many good and wise men tell us that his advent is now im- 
minent; that on any day the brightness of his appearing may 
burst upon our astonished sight. But if so, I do not find any 
valid support for the faith in these scripture admonitions to 
watchfulness. If the early Christians watched for Christ's com- 
ing under the impression that it was literally nigh; that it would 
probably occur in their day, they were certainly mistaken by at 
least eighteen centuries, and mistaken, not simply in the chro- 
nology, but in the intent of the Holy Spirit. But, it is urged, 
if the admonitions to watchfulness do not necessarily imply the 
literal nearness of the advent, they do imply uncertainty as to 
time, and prohibit the interjection of clearly defined events, es- 
pecially of a lengthened period of such marked characteristics 
as the millennium. This reasoning has an air of conclusiveness. 
But did not St. Paul himself, to relieve his Thessalonian brethren 
of their trouble, anticipative of the Saviour's speedy return, de- 
scribe with graphic particularity certain antecedent events? 
Yet, in so doing, he certainly did not intend to invalidate those 
solemn admonitions to constant watchfulness. One thing is sure, 
the day of the Lord is hastening on. In our chronology it may 
be ages in the future, yet in that divine chronology by which a 
thousand years is as one day, it is ever nigh. The admonitions 
to watchfulness can never be profitless to any of us, and will cer- 
tainly be rigidly applicable in some period of the world's his- 
tory, and so the solemn voice goes sounding down the ages : 
"Be ye also ready, for in such an hour as ye think not. the Son 
of man cometh." — Bishop W. X. Ninde, D.D. 




A doctrine clearly revealed in the Word of God, and which has a 
deep hold on the faith of men. 

[393] 



" If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all 
men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the 
dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For 
since by man came death, by man came also the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ 
shall all be made alive." 1 Cor. xv. 19-22. 

The time draws on 
When not a single spot of burial earth, 
Whether on land, or in the spacious sea, 
But must give back its long-committed dust 
Inviolate ; and faithfully shall these 
Make up the full amount ; not the least atom 
Embezzled or mislaid of the whole tale. 

c — Robert Blair. 

(394) 




RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

RESURRECTION OF THE BODY. 

rrGb 9 

ATURAL SCIENCE, of course, testifies nothing as to the 

resurrection of the body — pro or con. Revelation as- 
sures us that there shall be a resurrection ; and though 
it does not say, in so many words, " a resurrection of 
the body," or " of the flesh," as in the old creeds, yet 
that is inferred, as the soul needs no resurrection, having never 
fallen in the prostration (jttuais) of death. It does not, however, 
settle the question as to the revivification of the identical cor- 
puscles which were laid in the grave, but rather intimates the 
contrary, according to the analogy of our living bodies which 
change their corpuscles continually, without destroying the 
identity of the bodies which are thus in a constant flux — like a 
river which retains its name, its size, windings, color, etc., though 
the drops of water of which it is constituted are changing every 
moment. It is enough that we shall have bodies, " spiritual " 
(pneumatic) bodies, yet material shrines for our glorified spirits. 

— T. 0. Summers, D. D. y LL. D. 

EVEN THE HEATHEN HAD GLIMPSES OF THE DOCTRINE. 

The resurrection of the dead is the Christian's trust. By it 
we are believers. To the belief of this (article of faith) truth 
compels us — that truth which God reveals, but the crowd de- 
rides, which supposes that nothing will survive after death. 
And yet they do honor to their dead, and that too in the most 
expensive way according to their bequest, and with the daintiest 
banquets which the seasons can produce, on the presumption 
that those whom they declare to be incapable of all perception 

(395) 



396 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



still retain an appetite. . . . There is nothing after death, 
according to the school of Epicurus. After death all things 
come to an end, even death itself, says Seneca to like effect. It 
is satisfactory, however, that the no less important philosophy 
of Pythagoras and Empedocles, and the Platonists, take the 
contrary view, and declare the soul to be immortal ; affirming, 
moreover, in a way which most nearly approaches (to our own 
doctrine), that the soul actually returns into bodies, although not 
the same bodies, and not those of human beings invariably; 
thus Euphorbus is supposed to have passed into Pythagoras, 
and Homer into a peacock. They firmly pronounced the soul's 
renewal to be in a body, (deeming it) more tolerable to change 
the quality (of the corporeal state) than to deny it wholly : they 
at least knocked at the door of truth, although they entered not. 
Thus the world, with all its errors, does not ignore the resur- 
rection of the dead. — Tertullian. 

THE RESURRECTION SHALL OCCUR. 

The flesh shall rise again, wholly in every man, in its own 
identity, in its absolute integrity. Wherever it may be, it is in 
safe keeping in God's presence, through that most faithful 
" Mediator between God and man (the man), Christ Jesus," who 
shall reconcile both God to man and man to God, the spirit to 
the flesh, and the flesh to the spirit. Both natures has he al- 
ready united in his own self; he has fitted them together as 
bride and bridegroom in the reciprocal bond of wedded life. 
Now, if any should insist on making the soul the bride, then 
the flesh will follow the soul as her dowry. The soul shall 
never be an outcast, to be had home by the bridegroom bare 
and naked. She has her dower, her outfit, her fortune in the 
flesh, which shall accompany her with the love and fidelity of 
a foster-sister. But suppose the flesh to be the bride, then in 
Christ Jesus she has in the contract of his blood received his 
Spirit as her spouse. Now, what you take to be her extinction, 
you may be sure is only her temporary retirement. It is not 
the soul only which withdraws from view. The flesh, too, has 
her departures for a while — in waters, in fires, in birds, in beasts ; 



TER TULLIAN—L UTHER—B ONWICK. 



397 



she may seem to be dissolved into these, but she is only poured 
into them as into vessels. And should the vessels themselves 
afterwards fail to hold her, escaping from even these, and return- 
ing to her mother earth, she is absorbed once more, as it were 
by its secret embraces, ultimately to stand forth to view, like 
Adam when summoned to hear from his Lord and Creator the 
words, " Behold the man is become as one of us." — Tertullian. 



Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in 
books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time. — Martin Luther. 

EGYPTIAN BELIEF IN THE DOCTRINE. 

Nothing is more clear in the annals of Egypt than the belief 
in the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the body. Their 
Ritual contains passages referring to the subject, one of which 
an Egyptologist explains : " In order that the soul may give 
itself up in the Hall of Judgment, it must first open to itself the 
gate of the tomb." The celebrated Shaensensen, or " Book of 
the Resurrection," as translated by Brugsch, describes God giv- 
ing the deceased the breath of life after his soul and body have 
been purified. The god Ptah is said to fashion his flesh anew. 
The eighty-ninth chapter shows conclusively that, for the resur- 
rection to be complete, the soul must be reunited to the body. 
The one hundred and fifty-fourth chapter is entitled, " Leave not 
the Corpse to Dissolve." 

Augustine says : " The Egyptians alone believe the resurrec- 
tion, because they carefully preserve their dead bodies." 

Mariette Bey, in mentioning particulars of the tablet sacred to 
the memory of a prophet of Osiris, says of him : " Menai has 
sacrificed to all the funeral divinities ; he has endured all the 
trials; he has confronted the Supreme Judge, and been pro- 
claimed just ; by his virtue he has deserved to commence the 
Second Life, which will have no death. The soul goes now to 
reunite itself with the body, and at the centre of the solar disk 
appears the scarabeus as the symbol of that resurrection." 

Among the symbols of this recovery of the body may be 
mentioned a couple of trees beside a corpse, so illustrating 



3Qg RESURRECTION OE THE DEAD. 

latent vegetation. The dead may be seen pressing a bird to its 
side, to mark prospective flight. It was then realized what 
Euripides expressed : " To live is to die, and to die is to 
live." 

The return of the soul to the body, shown by the human- 
headed bird flying toward the mummy, is a common illustration 
of the change. In one instance Anubis is seen in the act of re- 
moving part of the mummy garments, that the soul may have 
readier access to its old partner. — James Bonwick. 

CHRISTIANITY TRANSFORMS THE HEATHEN SHADES AND GODLESS 
GHOSTS INTO REAL BEINGS OF ANGELIC LOVELINESS. 

In all ages and nations men have had some idea of a future 
life, but beyond the sphere of Christianity it has been an uncer- 
tain and unsatisfactory one. The heathen think departed spirits 
either occupy a world of ghosts, where they sigh after the upper 
air, or that they pass from animal to animal, in an indefinite 
number of transmigrations. 

Many infidels teach that millions of spirits walk the earth un- 
seen, both when we wake and when we sleep, while others, 
higher up, in successive circles, occupy the cloud-land; that 
they linger around earthly homes, occasionally breaking through 
to the real world, manifesting, however, less thought and virtue, 
as well as less capacity of usefulness, than embodied spirits. 
Even among us, how often at the coffin do doubts overwhelm 
us ! We speak to the corpse, but it hears not ; we touch it, but 
it feels not ; we lay it in the grave, and, like the remains of the 
dog, it mingles with the earth. Chemistry shows that it is re- 
solved into oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, and that 
these elements, through the processes of nature, may enter into 
other animal forms. The progress of the natural sciences and 
the prevalence of a material philosophy deepen the shadows 
that, in civilized lands, rest upon the tomb. Men look for the 
soul at the end of the scalpel, or the microscope, and in the 
residuum of the crucible, but it is not there. 

We reply, that the operations of the soul — affection speaking 
through lips of clay; hope beaming through eyes of flesh; art 



THOMPSON— R A YMOND. 



399 



expressing itself through fingers of bone — are spiritual. So, too, 
many things expressed by it in cold, material forms — beauty 
sitting upon the marble ; goodness beaming from the canvas ; 
truth from the page. The monument, the canvas, the page, 
may perish ; but the beauty, the goodness, the truth, are immor- 
tal — so, too, the soul from which they came. But the answer 
satisfies not the heart. The arguments of philosophers may 
almost convince, always charm, and yet not scatter all our 
doubts. Lo ! something not dreamed of in earthly philosophy, 
Jesus goes down to the tomb a corpse, enwrapt in grave-clothes, 
embalmed in spices, and comes up again. Now the mists of 
eternity have a nucleus around which to condense, and our ideas 
of immortality become definite and clear. 

You have seen the chemist hold up a solution of some neutral 
salt, say blue vitriol; it looks like water, it moves like it, has the 
same specific gravity, nearly. He draws the cork and drops 
into the bottle a solid crystal. The work of crystallization 
begins, and soon the liquid is turned into a mass of beautiful 
crystals. So the body of Christ, passing into the heavens, gives 
substantiality to what else were, to us, a world of shadows. The 
gates of pearl, and rivers of life, and fields of living green are 
real; the spirits of the departed take body; the skies become a 
solid sphere of happy being, a new heaven and a new earth, 
wherein dwelleth righteousness. Now we can lay the wife or 
the child in the grave, and say, " Mary, I shall see thee again, 
not a ghost, but as I have seen thee — in body, but incorruptible, 
immortal, glorified, in all the brightness and beauty of our 
transfigured Lord." Though our outward man decay, yet with 
our eyes shall we see God, and with a body radiant, obeying 
not earthly, but heavenly attractions, walk the blest fields with 
companions that we have loved. " Because I live, ye shall live 
also." — Bishop Edward Thompson, D. D., LL. D. 

THE DOCTRINE TAUGHT IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

It is sometimes said that the idea of a resurrection, whatever 
it is, is wholly of New Testament origin — that it is not found in 
the Old. When Job says, " Though after my skin worms destroy 



40Q RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God," it is claimed that he 
expressed only his confidence that he should recover from the 
loathsome disease then troubling him. This is a possible con- 
struction, but not probable, since, in that sense, it is too ex- 
tremely poetical for a thought so prosaic, and its connection 
with Job's faith in a living Redeemer, who should stand in the 
latter day upon the earth, gives it a more exalted significance. 
So that, unless it can be positively shown that Job was ignorant 
of the hope of a resurrection from the dead, we naturally inter- 
pret the passage in its literal sense. Isaiah, in the figure of his 
dead body arising, and of the earth casting out its dead ; and 
Ezekiel, in the vision of the valley of dry bones, represent the 
resuscitation of the Jewish state from a condition of prostration 
and death, showing most clearly that the resurrection of dead 
bodies was a common and a familiar thought. Daniel, in terms 
as literal as possible, expressly declares the fact of a future resur- 
rection. But it is conclusive of this question that at the coming 
of Christ the Jewish people were mostly of the sect of the Phari- 
sees, one of whose distinguishing tenets was the doctrine of the 
resurrection of the dead; or, in other words, the existence of two 
sects — the Sadducees and the Pharisees — one of which denied 
and the other affirmed the resurrection of the dead, proves con- 
clusively that the doctrine had come down from former genera- 
tions ; that is,"' it was a common doctrine of the Jewish religion 
in Old Testament times. — Miner Raymond, D. D. 

CHRIST'S DEATH AND HIS PEOPLE'S SLEEP. 

" I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning 
them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which 
have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, 
even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him." — I Thess. iv. 13, 14. We ought here, in the outset, to 
inquire why, when he is speaking concerning Christ, he employs 
the word death; but when he is speaking of our decease, he calls 
it sleep, and not death. For he did not say, Concerning them 
that are dead; but what did he say? — " Concerning them that 
are asleep." And again: "Even so them also which sleep in 



CHR YS OS TOM— L O GAN. 4 x 

Jesus will God bring with him." He did not say, Them that 
have died. Still again: " We who are alive and remain unto 
the coming of the Lord, shall not go before them that sleep." 
Here, too, he did not say, Them that are dead; but a third time, 
bringing the subject to their remembrance, he, for the third 
time, called death a "sleep." Concerning Christ, however, he 
did not speak thus — but how ? " For if we believe that Jesus 
died!' He did not say, Jesus slept, but " He died." Why, now, 
did he use the term death in reference to Christ, but in reference 
to us the term sleep ? For it was not casually or negligently 
that he employed this expression, but he had a wise and great 
purpose in so doing. In speaking of Christ, he said death, so 
as to confirm the fact that Christ had actually suffered death ; 
in speaking of us he said sleep, in order to impart consolation. 
For where a resurrection had already taken place, he mentions 
death with plainness; but where the resurrection is still a matter 
of hope, he says sleep, consoling us by this very expression, and 
cherishing our precious hopes. For he who is only asleep will 
surely awake ; and death is no more than a long sleep. 

— Chrysostom. 

VOICES FROM THE TOMB OF NATURE AND THE TOMB OF JESUS. 

The message which Jesus brought was life and immortality. 
From the star of Jacob light shone even upon the shades of 
death. As a proof of immortality, he called back the departed 
spirit from the world unknown; as an earnest of the resurrection 
to a future life, he himself arose from the dead. When we con- 
template the tomb of nature, we cry out, "Can these dry bones 
live? " When we contemplate the tomb of Jesus, we say, " Yes, 
they can live." As he rose, we shall in like manner rise. In 
the tomb of nature you see man return to the dust from whence 
he was taken; in the tomb of Jesus you see man restored to life 
again. In the tomb of nature you see the shades of death fall 
on the weary traveller, and the darkness of the long night close 
over his head; in the tomb of Jesus you see light arise upon the 
shades of death, and the morning dawn upon the long night of 
the grave. On the tomb of nature it is written, " Behold thy 
26 



402 



RESURRECTION 0E THE DEAD. 



end, manl Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. 
Thou, who now callest thyself the son of heaven, shalt become 
one of the clods of the valley." On the tomb of Christ it is 
written, " Thou diest, O man, but to live again. When dust re- 
turns to dust, the spirit shall return to God who gave it. I am 
the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in me, though he 
were dead, yet shall he live." From the tomb of nature you 
hear a voice, " Forever silent is the land of forgetfulness ! From 
the slumbers of the grave shall we awake no more ! Like the 
flowers of the field shall we be, as though we had never been ! " 
From the tomb of Jesus you hear, " Blessed are the dead that 
die in the Lord, yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their 
labors, and pass into glory. In my Father's house there are 
many mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go 
to prepare a place for you, and if I go away I will come again 
and take you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be 
also." — John Logan, F. R. S. 

TAUGHT PROMINENTLY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

In the New Testament this doctrine, freed from every vestige 
of obscurity, stands out with constant prominence, both in the 
teachings of our Lord and of his apostles. Says the Redeemer 
to the disconsolate sister of Lazarus : " I am the resurrection 
and the life : he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet 
shall he live : and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die" (John xi. 25, 26). "Whoso eateth my flesh, and 
drinketh my blood, hath eternal life ; and I will raise him up at 
the last day." " Marvel not at this : for the hour is coming, in 
the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and 
shall come forth ; they that have done good, unto the resurrec- 
tion of life ; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection 
of damnation " (John vi. 54 ; v. 28, 29). 

The apostles proclaimed this doctrine with the same con- 
stancy that they declared any vital truth of Christianity. They 
preached Jesus and the resurrection, and the one theme was in- 
separable from the other. Their oral ministry and their inspired 
epistles beam with the glad tidings of a resurrection, and mani- 



CO OKE—HOBER T. 



403 



fest the solemn importance in which it was held by them. 
When enforcing great practical truths, they open the solemn 
realities of a future world, declaring that there shall be a resur- 
rection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. When at- 
testing the efficacy and power of the Redeemer's atoning death, 
they declare its potency in abolishing death, as well as in 
crushing him that had the power of death, even the devil. In 
asserting the fact of our Lord's resurrection, they adduce it as 
an evidence and a prototype of our resurrection, and regard the 
general resurrection as an event so certainly connected with the 
resurrection of our Lord, that to deny it was in effect to deny 
that our Lord himself had risen from the tomb, and thus to un- 
dermine the whole Christian fabric. " Now if Christ be preached 
that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there 
is no resurrection of the dead ? But if there be no resurrection 
of the dead, then is Christ not risen : and if Christ be not risen, 
then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, 
and we are found false witnesses of God ; because we have testi- 
fied of God that he raised up Christ : whom he raised not up, if 
so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is 
not Christ raised : and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; 
ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep 
in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in 
Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ 
risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that 
slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the 
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so 
in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. xv. 12-22). Such 
is the clear and explicit form in which this doctrine is revealed 
in the sacred volume : such is the solid foundation of the 
believer's hope. — William Cooke, D.D. 

OMNIPOTENCE ADEQUATE. 

What can reason teach us here ? She may indeed by analogy 
illustrate and confirm the doctrine of the resurrection when it is 
revealed; but as an original truth she knew nothing of it. The 
tomb received in its dark embrace the mouldering body, and 



404 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



there was no light that dawned on the night of the grave, 
" Blessed then be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
who hath begotten us to a lively hope by the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ from the dead " (i Pet. i. 3). " He is the first-fruits 
of them that slept" (1 Cor. xv. 20) ; and at the great harvest, in 
the last day, "those who sleep in Jesus will God bring with 
him " (i Thess. iv. 14). The body, sown in corruption, shall be 
raised in incorruption — sown in dishonor, it shall be raised in 
glory — sown in weakness, it shall be raised in power — sown a 
natural body, it shall be raised a spiritual body. 

How is all this to be effected ? By that mighty power which 
raised up Christ from the dead. Here we take our stand — on 
the omnipotence of God — and defy every attack against the doc- 
trine of the resurrection. We laugh to scorn all attempts to 
wrest from us our hope, through a supposed impossibility of the 
resurrection, as puny struggles against the omnipotence of God. 
Did he not at first construct a human form from the dust of the 
earth ? Did he not breathe into a mass of clay the breath of 
life? And when he again speaks, shall it not be done? Can 
he not again bring bone to bone, sinew to its sinew, flesh to its 
flesh ? Fear not, Christian ! thy dust may be scattered to the 
winds of heaven — but thy God is there. It may repose in the 
lowest abysses of the grave — he is there. It may dwell in the 
uttermost parts~of the sea — even there his hand shall lead thee, 
his right hand shall hold thee, and bring thee forth, incorrupt- 
ible and glorious, like unto that body which now receives the 
homage of the angels around the throne. Thou shalt be raised 
at the last day. Let us comfort one another with these words. 
— Rt. Rev. Bishop John Henry Hobert, D. D. 

DEATH LEADS TO A REBUILDING. 

But you say, a dead man experiences corruption, and becomes 
dust and ashes. And what then, beloved hearers ? For this 
very reason we ought to rejoice. For when a man is about to 
rebuild an old and tottering house, he first sends out its occu- 
pants, then tears it down and rebuilds anew a more splendid 
one. This occasions no grief to the occupants, but rather joy \ 



" ^ • • 



■ " . " ' 





RAISING THE WIDOW'S SON. 
And He said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. — Luke vii. 14. 



CHR YSOSTOM—SO UTH. 



405 



for they do not think of the demolition which they see, but of 
the house which is to come, though not yet seen. When God 
is about to do a similar work, he destroys our body, and re- 
moves the soul which was dwelling in it, as from some house, 
that he may build it anew and more splendidly, and again bring 
the soul into it with greater glory. Let us not, therefore, re- 
gard the tearing down, but the splendor which is to succeed. 

DEATH RESULTS IN A REMOULDING. 

If, again, a man has a statue decayed by rust and age, and 
mutilated in many of its parts, he breaks it up and casts it into a 
furnace, and after the melting he receives it in a more beautiful 
form. As, then, the dissolving in a furnace was not a destruc- 
tion, but a renewing of the statue, so the death of our bodies is 
not a destruction, but a renovation. When, therefore, you see, 
as in a furnace, our flesh flowing away to corruption, dwell not 
on that sight, but wait for the recasting. And be not satisfied 
with the extent of this illustration, but advance in your thought 
to a still higher point ; for the statuary, casting into the furnace 
a brazen image, does not furnish you in its place a golden and 
undecaying statue, but again makes a brazen one. God does 
not thus ; but casting in a mortal body, formed of clay, he re- 
turns to you a golden and immortal statue ; for the earth, 
receiving a corruptible and decaying body, gives back the same 
incorruptible and undecaying. Look not, therefore, on the 
corpse, lying with closed eyes and speechless lips, but on the 
man that is risen, that has received glory unspeakable and 
amazing, and direct your thoughts from the present sight to the 
future hope. — Chrysostom. 

A GENERAL RESURRECTION NECESSARY. 

Since it has pleased Almighty God to govern the world by 
the method of rewards and punishments, a resurrection of the 
persons so to be rewarded or punished must needs be granted 
absolutely and unavoidably necessary: nothing in this life giving 
us a satisfactory account, that either the good or the bad have 
been yet dealt with according to the strict and utmost merit 



406 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



of their works : which yet, the justice of an infinitely wise Judge 
and Governor having so positively declared his will in the case, 
cannot but insist upon. For albeit God, as Creator of the world, 
acted therein by an absolute, sovereign power, always under 
the conduct of infinite wisdom and goodness ; yet, as Governor 
of it, his justice is the prime attribute which he proceeds by, 
and the laws the grand instruments whereby justice acts, as 
rewards and punishments are the things which give life, force, 
and efficacy to justice itself. Upon which grounds the apostle 
gives us a full account of the whole matter, in that excellent 
place, 2 Cor. v. 10: "We must all," says he, " appear before the 
judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things 
done in his body, according to what he hath done, whether it be 
good or bad." Thus says the apostle. But the dead, we know, 
as such, can receive no such things ; nor are subjects capable of 
rewards and punishments: so that the sum of the apostle's 
whole argument amounts to this : that as certainly as God 
governs the world wisely, and will one day judge it righteously, 
so certain is it, that there must be a general retribution, and, by 
consequence, a general resurrection. — Robert South, D. D. 

JESUS IS THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. 

When we ask ourselves what this title, "The Resurrection," 
involves, we perceive that in one aspect it is something more, in 
another something less, than that other title of " The Life," 
which Christ also challenges for his own. It is more, for it is 
life in conflict with and overcoming death ; it is life being the 
death of death, meeting in its highest manifestation that of 
physical dissolution and decay, and vanquishing it there (Isaiah 
xxv. 8; xxvi. 19; Daniel xii. 2). It is less, for so long as that 
title belongs to him, it implies something still undone, a mor- 
tality not yet wholly swallowed up in life, a last enemy not yet 
wholly destroyed and put under his feet (1 Cor. xv. 25, 26). As 
he is the resmrection of the dead, so is he the life of the living — 
absolute life, having life in himself, for so it has been given 
him of the Father (John v. 26), the one fountain of life; so that 
all who receive not life from him pass into the state of death, first 



TRENCH— KRUMMACHER. ^ » 

the death of the spirit, and then; as the completion of their death, 
the death also of the body. I am the Resurrection ; as such he 
will rescue every one that believeth on him from death and the 
grave; I am the life: that is, Whosoever liveth, every one that 
draweth the breath of life and believeth upon me, shall know 
the power of an everlasting life, shall never truly die. Here, 
as so often in our Lord's words, the temporal death is taken no 
account of, but quite overlooked, and the believer in him is 
contemplated as already lifted above death, and made partaker 
of everlasting life (John vi. 47 ; Eph. ii. 6 ; 1 John iii. 14). 

— Archbishop Trench. 

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION. 

A profound, solemn stillness reigns all around, broken only 
by the tread of the guards as they pace backwards and for- 
wards before the tomb of the crucified Prince of Peace. The 
second night since Good Friday has passed without any dis- 
turbance, apparently there is as little probability of a resurrection 
of the deceased as there is of an attack by the adherents and 
friends of the Crucified One. The grave lies mute and closed 
before us ; its seal remains unbroken. It would seem that the 
reign of the pretended new King of Zion was gone by forever. 
But what now ! On a sudden the earth begins to tremble ; the 
rocks are rent asunder all around with fearful crash ; superhuman 
forms, bright as lightning and in garments white as snow, glide 
down from the heights of heaven to the garden. They are holy 
angels, like those who appeared at our Lord's nativity, and who 
came to minister to him after his victory over the tempter in the 
desert. One of these gracious messengers approaches the tomb, 
touches the mass of rock which held it closed, and in a moment the 
seals are burst, the ponderous stone is rolled away, and from the 
opened portal of the grave there steps forth, radiant with heavenly 
glory, he who was dead ! — and, behold, " is alive for evermore." 
The guards, indeed, scarcely discern the risen One. The daz- 
zling robe of light which he wears hides him from their bewildered 
sight. The only object they distinctly see is the seraph-form 
sitting in triumph on the rolled-away stone, as if it were a throne 



408 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



of state ; and then with inexpressible consternation, trembling 
in every limb, they start up and hasten away to report to their 
superiors in Jerusalem the unheard-of prodigy that had occurred. 

— F. W. Krummacher, D. D. 

CHRIST'S RESURRECTION THE PRELUDE OF OURS. 

It is as the prelude of our own resurrection that Christ's is 
the object of our greatest satisfaction and joy. In these cast- 
off grave clothes, the napkin and linen shroud, there is more to 
draw our eyes, and awaken our interest and admiration, than in 
the robes or royal purple of the greatest monarch on earth. 
That empty tomb, rudely hollowed in the earth, is a greater 
spectacle than Egypt's mighty pyramids, or the costliest sep- 
ulchres that have held the ashes of the proudest kings. How 
full of meaning is its emptiness ! — what good news to the church 
in Mary's disappointment ! — what joys flow in these women's 
tears ! Thank God, they could not find him. He is not there. 
No, Mary ! they have not taken away your Lord ; no robber has 
rifled that sacred tomb — see, the dew lies sparkling on the grass, 
nor feet have brushed it but those of One who has left the 
grave. He is .risen ; and as the first fruits and first ripe sheaf 
that were offered to the Lord, his resurrection is the pledge and 
promise of a coming harvest. Henceforth the grave holds but 
a lease of the saints : " Because he rose, we shall rise also." 
. . . In Christ, the first-born, I see the grave giving up its 
dead ; from the depths of the sea, from lonely wilderness and 
crowded churchyards they come — like the dews of the grass, 
an innumerable multitude. Risen Lord! we rejoice in thy 
resurrection, and hail it as the harbinger of our own. The 
first to come forth, thou art the elder brother of a family whose 
countless numbers Abraham saw in the dust of the desert, whose 
holy beauty he saw shining in the stars of heaven. 

— Thomas Guthrie. 

IF CHRIST BE NOT RISEN, WHAT? 

The more you examine it fairly, the more you will be con- 
vinced that the evidence is so overwhelming that you cannot 



JOHN MONRO GIBSON, D. D. 409 

get away from it without the most desperate expedients. When, 
in the olden time, a far-off claimant for a throne would make 
good his illegal pretensions, he must wade through seas of 
blood to it, he must put to death the heir apparent and the heir 
presumptive, and as many others as lay between him and the 
coveted possession. Similar is the task which modern infidelity 
has to perform before it can erect its usurping throne on the 
empty grave of Jesus. It must make havoc of all the four gos- 
pels, reducing them mainly to a tissue of lies. It must destroy 
the historic credibility of the Acts of the Apostles. It must get 
rid in some fashion of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. It 
must make havoc of every scrap of writing that remains from 
the first century, which refers to the resurrection. It must de- 
spoil the character of Matthew and Mark, Luke and John, Paul 
and Peter. It must crucify again the Lord himself, for again 
and again while he was alive he said that he would rise again. 
It must dispose even of Christianity itself, with its fifty-two 
commemorations of the resurrection every year, and show how 
it was possible that such an institution was founded on a lie. 
It must, in fact, murder history, and murder character, and mur- 
der truth. And why? All because the great nineteenth century 
is supposed to have settled unalterably that it is a thing incred- 
ible that God should raise the dead. But may we not, with all 
due respect even to so great an abstraction as the nineteenth 
century, ask again the old question, " Why should it be thought 
a thing incredible that God should raise the dead ? " What a 
wonderful resurrection does he work every year in those very 
weeks that encircle the glad Easter day ! He makes the dead 
trees and dead flowers to live again, and shall it be said that he 
cannot raise to life a dead man ? True it is that we do not see 
men raised from the dead now-a-days ; but neither do we see 
men like Jesus Christ now-a-days. If he had been only an 
ordinary man, it would have seemed well nigh incredible that 
God should raise him from the dead. But he was no ordinary 
man. And when you think what sort of a man he was, the 
probability is shifted to the other side. It was not a mere 
miracle. When profoundly looked at, it was no marvel at all 



410 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

The apostle Peter puts it in the right light in his first sermon 
after Pentecost : " Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the 
bands of death, because it was not possible that he should be 
holden of it." O my friends, if we would only acquaint our- 
selves with Jesus Christ ; if we would drink his words • if we 
would enter into sympathy with the plan and purpose and tenor 
of his life ; if we would gaze on the beauty of his face and fill 
our hearts with the admiration which is due to the immortal 
loveliness of his character ; if we would get really and truly ac- 
quainted with him, instead of thinking it a thing incredible that 
God should raise him from the dead, we should think it a thing 
incredible that God should not do it. We should enter into the 
true and deep philosophy of the apostle when he said, " God 
raised him, because it was not possible that such an one as he 
should be holden of death." — John Monro Gibson, D. D. 

RAISING THE WIDOW'S SON. 

(Luke vii. 11-17.) 

We see Jesus at the gate of the city of Nain just as a funeral 
procession is carrying out the dead. The corpse is that of a 
young man, " the only son of his mother," and she a widow. 
That she was a good woman, and he a good son, is evidenced 
by the fact that " much people of the city was with her," be- 
moaning an event as calamitous as it was remediless. Jesus 
saw that mother, saw the lifeless clay, and saw the flowing tears. 
His compassion was stirred, and he said, " Weep not," a com- 
mand which would have seemed cruel but for what followed. 
The Lord of life " came and touched the bier." The procession 
halted. There was no ostentatious display of authority or 
power, but " they that bare the dead stood still." And Jesus 
said, " Young man, I say unto thee, Arise ! " There was the 
mandate of power. The dull, cold ear listened to the voice of 
the Son of God. " He that was dead sat up, and began to 
speak." What tenderness is suggested in the words which fol- 
lowed, "And he delivered him to his mother." If an uninspired 
writer had been writing this history, what a long, sentimental 
and glowing description we would have had of the scene. He 



POTTS— EDDY. 



4 II 



would surely have told us what the young man said about the 
place where his soul was — how he felt when he was dying — and 
how it seemed to come back from the spirit world to reinhabit 
his body. And certainly the temptation to such dilation would 
'have been powerful. The event was a great one. It made a 
profound impression upon the people. " There came a fear on 
all : and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is 
risen up among us ; and, That God hath visited his people." 
Moreover, in those days of poor facilities for the spread of news, 
this wonderful intelligence " went forth throughout all Judea, 
and throughout all the region round about." But none were 
found to gainsay the truth that the dead had actually b^en 
raised up. — The Editor. 

THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER. 

(Mark v. 35-43-) 

Taking with him Peter, James and John, and the parents of 
the child, Jesus enters the chamber of death. They gather about 
the couch, and stand solemn and expectant, gazing upon the 
cold yet beautiful form before them. Two souls, believing and 
hoping, stand like funeral tapers beside the couch — the father 
and the mother : his church the Lord sees represented in his 
three most trusted apostles. All things being now ready, Jesus 
takes the damsel by the hand, saying, " Maid, arise." How 
divinely simple and calm, yet confident, the act and word ! 
How instantaneous and wonderful the effect ! The touch and 
the voice of the Lord of Life vivify the marble form ; the de- 
parted spirit, summoned back by him who holds the keys of 
Hades and of Death, returns to its habitation ; the heart throbs 
anew; the ruddy current of life once more rushes through the 
pale limbs, and flushes like an aurora the lovely face ; the lungs 
heave ; the eyes open, no longer glassy, but beaming with life 
and soul ; the maiden starts up on her couch, and looks around 
her — she lives. What are the emotions of that father and 
mother ? No wonder that all other thoughts are swallowed up 
in astonishment, and that Jesus finds it necessary to order food 
for the resuscitated child. Having charged those who had been 



412 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



witnesses of the miracle to keep it secret, Jesus left the house. 
What happy hearts he left behind him we can easily imagine. 

— Zachary Eddy, D. D. 

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST A HISTORIC CERTAINTY. 

Nothing stands more historically certain than that Jesus rose 
from the dead and appeared again to his followers, or, than that 
their seeing him thus again was the beginning of a higher faith, 
and of all their Christian work in the world. It is equally cer- 
tain that they thus saw him, not as a common man, or as a 
shade or ghost risen from the grave ; but as the One only Son 
of God — already more than a man at once in nature and power ; 
and that all who thus beheld him recognized at once and in- 
stinctively his unique divine dignity, and firmly believed in it 
henceforth. The twelve and others had indeed learned to look 
on him, even in life, as the true Messianic King and the Son of 
God, but from the moment of his reappearing they recognized 
more clearly and fully the divine side of his nature, and saw in 
him the conqueror of death. Yet the two pictures of him thus 
fixed in their minds were in their essence identical. That former 
familiar appearance of the earthly Christ, and this higher vision 
of him, with its depth of emotion and ecstatic joy, were so inter- 
related that, even in the first days or weeks after his death, they 
could never have seen in him the heavenly Messiah if tbey had 
not first known him so well as the earthly. — Heinrich Ewald. 

THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS. 

(John xi.) 

Lazarus was dead. For four days his body had lain in the 
tomb. His loving sisters, Mary and Martha, had mourned 
their loss, and deeply deplored the prolonged absence of Jesus, 
their pronounced friend. At length he approaches their home 
in Bethany. Martha goes out to meet him. The first words 
of her doubtful faith are, " Lord, if thou hadst been here, my 
brother had not died. But I know that even now, whatsoever 
thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." Jesus saith unto 
her, "Thy brother shall rise again/" "I know," she replies, 




RAISING THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS. 

And straightway the damsel arose, and walked. — Mark v. 42, 



PO TTS—MA TTISON. 4 x ^ 

" that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.* 
Then came that memorable pronunciation which has evei 
thrilled the heart of Christendom : " I am the resurrection and 

THE LIFE ; HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, 
YET SHALL HE LIVE ; AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN 

me shall never die." What majesty! yet at the grave he sub- 
stantiates his authority thus to speak. " Take ye away the 
stone ! " is the mandate of Jesus. The stone is rolled away, and 
there lies Lazarus in his winding sheet, cold and stiff in death. 
With what awe and expectation may the crowd have gazed upon 
the scene, and awaited the momentous issue ! It is but a mo- 
ment. Jesus returns thanks to God in that he heard him, and 
then gives the immortal summons, "Lazarus, come forth/" 
" That voice," beautifully observes one, " pierces the dull ear of 
the dead ; the spirit returns to the mouldering frame ; the life- 
blood courses through the shrivelled veins; the limbs heave and 
stir; and the late occupant of the sepulchre appears at its 
mouth, with his burial garments about him, his pale lips open- 
ing with thanksgivings, and his glazed eye kindling with sight, 
as he raises it in adoring homage to the face of his deliverer." 
So undoubted was this stupendous miracle that the Jews con- 
sulted to put Lazarus to death again, to be rid of his attraction 
and influence among the people (see John xii. 1, 2 ; 9-1 1). 

— The Editor. 

THE TRUE THEORY OF THE RESURRECTION, 

What portion of the mortal body will enter into the compo- 
sition of the new or resurrection body ? We answer : 

1. In general, that while it may not and probably will not in- 
clude all that in every case stands connected with, or seems to 
be part of the body at death, it must and will include most of the 
substance of the body — enough to justify the Scriptures in call- 
ing it our " body," " this corruptible," the " bodies of the 
saints," etc. 

2. Not only do the teachings of revelation require that most 
of the substance of the present body enter into the composition 
of the new one, but that it include that which has been most 



414 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



permanently connected with the soul during life, and is most 
legitimately and properly a part of the mortal body at the hour 
of death. We thus reach the conclusion that " all that consti- 
tuted or properly belonged to the body at the hour of death, and is 
essential to its corporeal identity, will be raised again to life ; and 
will go to constitute the new or resurrection body." 

— Hiram Mattison, D. D. 

THE RAISING OF JAIRUS' DAUGHTER, THE WIDOW'S SON, AND 
LAZARUS, MARK AN ASCENDING SCALE OF DIFFICULTY. 

As the body of one freshly dead, from which life has but just 
departed, is very different from a mummy or skeleton, or from 
the dry bones which the prophet saw in the valley of death 
(Ezek. xxxvii.), so is it, though not in the same degree, different 
from a corpse, whence for some days the breath of life has fled. 
There is, so to speak, a fresh-trodden way between the body 
and the soul which just has forsaken it, the last lingering for a 
season near the tabernacle where it has dwelt so long, as knowing 
that the links that united them have not even now been divided 
forever. Even science itself has arrived at the conjecture, that 
the last echoes of life ring in the body much longer than is com- 
monly supposed ; that for a while it is full of the reminiscences 
of life. Out of this we may explain how it so frequently comes 
to pass, that all which marked the death-struggle passes pres- 
ently away, and the true image of the departed, the image it 
may be of years long before, reappears in perfect calmness and 
in almost ideal beauty. All this being so, we shall at once recog- 
nize in the quickening of him that had been four days dead 
(John xi. 17), a yet mightier wonder than in the raising of the 
young man who was borne out to his burial (Luke vii. 12); 
whose burial, according to Jewish custom, will have followed 
death by an interval, at most, of a single day ; and again in 
that miracle a mightier outcome of Christ's power *iian in the 
restoration of the daughter of Jairus, wherein life's flame, like 
some newly-extinguished taper, was still more easily rekindled, 
when thus brought in contact with him who is the fountain- 
flame of all life. Immeasurably more stupendous than all these, 



TRENCH— TER TUL LI AN. 4 1 5 

will be the wonder of that hour when all the dead of old, who 
will have lain, some of them, for many thousand years, in the 
dust of death, shall be summoned from, and shall leave their 
graves at the same quickening voice (John v. 28, 29). 

— Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench, D. D. 

BY RAISING THE DEAD, CHRIST ATTESTED THE DOCTRINE OF THE 

RESURRECTION. 

After the Lord's words in regard to the resurrection, what are 
we to think of the purport of his actions, when he raises dead 
persons from their biers and their graves ? To what end did he 
do so ? If it was only for the mere exhibition of his power, or 
to afford the temporary favor of restoration to life, it was really 
no great matter for him to raise men to die over again. If, 
however, as was the truth, it was rather to put in secure keep- 
ing men's belief in a future recognition, then it must follow, 
from the particular form of his own examples, that the said 
resurrection will be a bodily one. I can never allow it to be 
said that the resurrection of the future, being destined for the 
soul only, did then receive these preliminary illustrations of a 
raising of the flesh, simply because it would have been impossible 
to have shown the resurrection of an invisible soul except by the 
resuscitation of a visible substance. They have but a poor 
knowledge of God who suppose him to be only capable of doing 
what comes within the compass of their own thoughts. . . . 
No example, indeed, is greater than the thing of which it is a 
sample. Greater, however, it is if souls with their body are to 
be raised as the evidence of their resurrection without the body, 
so as that the entire salvation of man (in soul and body) should 
become a guarantee for only the half (the soul), whereas the 
condition in all examples is, that that which would be deemed 
the less — I mean the resurrection of the soul only — should be 
the foretaste, as it were, of the rising of the flesh also at its 
appointed time. And therefore, according to our estimate of 
the truth, those examples of dead persons who were raised by 
the Lord were indeed a proof of the resurrection both of the 
flesh and of the soul — a proof, in fact, that this gift was to be 



416 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

denied to neither substance. Considered, however, as examples 
only, they express less significance than Christ will express at 
last, for they were not raised up for glory and immortality, but 
only for another death. — Tertidlian. 

THE SAINTS WHICH AROSE AFTER CHRIST'S DEATH. 

(Matt, xxvii. 52, 53.) 

As an effect of the Saviour's death, the domains of death are 
pierced, and a few of the blessed saints, who are precious to 
Christ, are awakened to life as specimens in advance of his resur- 
rection power. We should put a period after the word opened. 
Then we shall perceive that the bodies of the saints did not rise 
and come into the city until after his resurrection. His death 
opened their graves ; his resurrection raised them from the dead. 
Observe, it was not the souls or spirits alone of the dead who 
were recalled from the domains of death. " For many bodies of 
the saints which slept arose." Their bodies were reanimated by 
the spirit, and returned again to life. Some think they were 
saints lately dead. Otherwise, how should it be known who 
they were. But this is by no means certain. ... It must 
be specially noted that these saints appeared only after the resur- 
rection of Christ. The fact that not the slightest allusion is 
made in any other part of the New Testament to this resurrec- 
tion, has induced many commentators to think that there is 
something mythical in these two verses. But let it be remarked 
that the appearance of these saints to many occurred in the midst 
of the passover, when thousands if not millions were present from 
various parts of the world ; and that the persons to whom they 
may have appeared were soon dispersed to their various abodes, 
so as to leave a much less permanent and public account of the 
transaction than would otherwise have been the case. Hence 
it is not strange that Matthew alone notices the fact ; and that, 
too, only to show the immediate effects of Christ's death and 
resurrection. These saints " went into the holy city and ap- 
peared unto many." Matthew narrated these facts in Jerusalem, 
the very city where they are supposed to have taken place; and 
there were probably those who were able to attest them. 

— Whe don's Commentary, 



WAKEFIELD— A Q UINA S—COOK. ^ V j 

THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

It is a remark which must occur to every person, that a spir- 
itual body is an apparent contradiction, and we are therefore 
under the necessity of taking the word spiritual in an unusual 
sense. The apostle does not mean that the resurrection body, 
like the immortal spirit, will be immaterial ; for then it could not 
be the same body that dies. Nor does he mean that it will be 
so sublimated or etherealized as not to be a body in the proper 
sense of the word. It will be "a body," but it will be so far 
spiritual as to be without the mere animal functions which are 
essential to the natural body. The meaning of the apostle 
seems to be this : As the soul has an existence independent of 
animal functions, living without nourishment, and incapable 
of decay, sickness, or death, so will be the body in the resurrec- 
tion. It will be destitute of the peculiar physical organization 
of flesh and blood ; for " flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
kingdom of God." It must therefore undergo a new modifica- 
tion, in consequence of which, though still material, it will be 
very different from what it now is. It will be a body without 
the vital functions of the animal economy, living in the manner 
in which we conceive spirits to live, and sustaining and exercis- 
ing its powers without waste, weariness, decay, or the necessity 
of having them recruited by food and sleep. 

— Samuel Wakefield. 

THE PROPERTIES OF A GLORIFIED BODY. 

First, "the just shall shine like the sun ; " so shone the faces 
of Moses and Stephen. Second, they " shall fly upon the wings 
of the wind ; " thus Philip was carried from Gaza, in the desert, 
to Azobus. Third, '* our corruption must put on incorruption ; " 
as St. Paul miraculously shook off the serpent, and felt no harm. 

— T. Aquinas. 

SCIENTIFIC VIEWS OF THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 

If you come to the conclusion that there is an invisible, non- 
atomic, ethereal enswathement, which the soulfills, and through 
which it flashes more rapidly than electricity through any cloud, 
27 



4iS 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



you must remember that the majestic authority for that state- 
ment is simply the axiom that every change must have an 
adequate cause. This is cool precision ; this is exact research 
on the edge of the tomb. Professor Beale says, in so many 
words, " that the force which weaves these tissues must be sep- 
arable from the body ; " for it very plainly is not the result 
of the action of physical agents. Ulrici shows, especially in a 
magnificent passage on immortality, that all the latest results of 
physiological research go to show that immortality is probable. 
You say that, unless we can prove the existence of something 
for the substratum of mind, we may be doubtful about the per- 
sistency of memory after death ; but what if this non-atomic, 
ethereal body goes out of the physical form at death ? In that 
case, what materialist will be acute enough to show that memory 
does not go out also? You affirm that, without matter, there 
can be no activity of mind ; and that, although the mind may 
exist without matter, it cannot express itself. You say that un- 
less certain, I had almost said material, records remain in pos- 
session of the soul when it is out of the body, there must be 
oblivion of all that occurred in this life. But how are you to 
meet the newest form of science, which gives the soul a non- 
atomic enswathement as the page on which to write its records ? 
That page is never torn up. The acutest philosophy is now 
pondering what the possibilities of this non-atomic, ethereal 
body are, when separated from the fleshy body; and the opinion 
of Germany is coming to be very emphatic, that all that materi- 
alists have said about our memory ending when our physical 
bodies are dissolved, and about there being no possibility of the 
activity of the soul in separation from the physical body, is 
simply lack of education. There is high authority and great 
unanimity on the propositions I am now defending; and al- 
though I do not pledge myself always to defend every one of 
these theses, yet I must do so in the present state of knowledge 
and in the name of a gulf-current of speculation which is 
twenty-five years old, and has a very victorious aspect as we 
look backward to the time when the microscope began its 
revelations, 



COOK— GROUT. 



419 



It becomes clear, therefore, that, even in that state of ex- 
istence which succeeds death, the soul may have a spiritual 
body. 

What! You are preaching to us the book called the Holy 
Word? Yes, I am; and here is a page of it (with a hand on 
colored diagrams of living tissues). A spiritual body! That is 
a phrase we did not expect to hear in the name of science. It 
is the latest whisper of science, and ages ago it was a revelation. 

The existence of that body preserves the memories acquired 
during life in the flesh. 

If this ethereal, non-atomic ertswathement of the soul be in- 
terpreted to mean what the Scriptures mean by a spiritual body, 
there is entire harmony between the latest results of science and 
the inspired doctrine of the resurrection 

When the Bible speaks of a spiritual body, it does not imply 
that the soul is material ; it does not teach materialism at all ; 
it simply implies that the soul has a glorified enswathement, 
which will accompany it in the next world. I believe that it is 
a distinct biblical doctrine, that there is a spiritual body as there 
is a natural body, and that the former has extraordinary powers. 

— Joseph Cook. 

THE RE-EMBODIMENT OF THE SOUL. 

That the soul does at death pass into a disembodied state, is 
undoubtedly the teaching of Scripture. There is no interruption 
of its consciousness, activity and joy. Nevertheless, the bodily 
rising (save in the case of the generation still alive when it 
transpires) will be at the end of a period of " sleep," " at the last 
trump." For a time the spirit is " unclothed," or has at best an 
ethereal covering, a " white raiment," to give it shape, and rela- 
tion to other beings. It has no substantial body. . . . But man, 
as a whole, is both body and spirit. Without the other, neither 
can fulfil its destiny. Not only is the body a habitation for the 
soul ; it is its organ of communication, of communion and ex- 
pression. That separation which we call death is a fruit and 
penalty of sin. The ideal man — man as he first existed in the 
thought of God, and as he will exist when fully restored and 



420 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

glorified — will be an embodied spirit. This promise is on many 
a Bible page, and can never be spiritualized or refined away. It 
is this corruptible which is to put on incorruption, and this 
mortal which is to put on immortality. " He that raised up 
Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies." 
It is our "vile body" which is to be fashioned like unto his. 

— Rev. H. M. Grout. 

THE IDENTITY OF THE FUTURE WITH THE PRESENT BODY. 

By this we do not mean sameness of elements or materials. 
On this point the apostle is explicit : " That which thou sowest, 
thou sowest not that body that shall be." Yet in no part of our 
complex being shall we be other than we were. . . . It is very 
clear that, in order to identity, there must be some actually con- 
necting link between the old body and the new. Amid all the 
changes that transpire, something must abide. What is it? 
Paul has been supposed to teach that that connecting link, that 
abiding something, is laid in the grave, and raised thence on the 
resurrection morn. Is this supposition correct? This turns 
upon the answer to be given to another question : What is that 
seed-field in which "it is sown"? Is it the grave? So many 
have assumed ; the assumption is one, however, which cannot 
stand. " That which thou sowest, it may chance of wheat or of 
some other grain,'*- is a living seed; corruptible indeed, liable to 
decay, and yet alive; whereas the body we lay in the grave is 
already dead. A living seed planted in the warm earth is by no 
means a fit emblem of an already disintegrating body deposited 
in the tomb. Moreover, the corruption, dishonor and weakness, 
ascribed to that which is sown, belong to the body in its present 
living state. Are we not, then, in the seed-field already? Are 
we not, according to the figure employed, in the ground here 
and now? Of the words, "It is sown in corruption," etc., a 
distinguished Bible student has said : " We are not to think of 
the body merely in the state in which it is laid in the grave, but 
of the body as it exists generally in the present state." Says 
another: "The contrast drawn out here is not between the body 
as it lies mouldering in the tomb, but between the body as it 



REV. HENRY M. GROUT. 



421 



now is and the body as it is to be hereafter. It is sown in cor- 
ruption, liable now to disease, subject to decay, ready to become 
the prey to putrefaction." With Brown, Hanna and Neander, 
and others of not lesser note, we may say that the sowing is 
here and now. 

The connecting link is not to be sought in the grave. Again 
we ask, then, what is it ? No fact is more familiar than that our 
present bodies are subject to continual change. In the course 
of a few years that change is entire. Of the particles which 
composed them in infancy, not one remains in youth ; of those 
which filled out the frame in youth, not one remains in middle 
life. Is identity lost ? No. And why not ? Something abides ; 
and that is the most essential thing of all. Call it the vital prin- 
ciple, the law of assimilation and arrangement, the organic 
force, or, if you prefer, an inner spiritual body — whatever you 
please. It is this by means of which, in obedience to God's 
behest, the process of daily growth and renewal goes on. It is 
this which, as the old materials are thrown off, replaces them 
with new; disposing them as the need may be, attracting and 
sending one particle this way to make bone, another that way 
to make muscle or nerve, and so on. From infancy to child- 
hood, from childhood to youth, middle life and old age, this, 
and this only, abides. It is this, then, which constitutes identity. 
Suppose now that, like the germ in the seed, to which it may 
correspond, the activity of this principle is made to depend upon 
right conditions. Like the germ in the grain of wheat in a 
buried mummy, it may lie dormant for ages, if need be. It 
waits God's appointed time, divinely arranged conditions, and 
then it wakes anew. God's appointed time will be the morning 
of the resurrection. The voice of Christ will be one of the ap- 
pointed conditions. Straightway, whether instantly or by a 
process we need not inquire, it will then and there attract and 
dispose, according to the Divine order, the materials provided 
for its new habitation or clothing. 

If anything like this be the truth, we can plainly see how it 
is that while the dust we lay in the grave is scattered upon the 
four winds, is taken up and incorporated with other bodies, the 



422 



RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 



resurrection body shall nevertheless be in the highest sense 
identical with that we bear about with us here. It is so in the 
same sense and for the same reason that that of middle and later 
life is identical with that of childhood and youth. Built up by 
the same abiding force, the home of the same spirit, serving the 
same great needs, namely, for contact with the world without 
and for communion with others of our kind, it will be, however 
" changed," altogether the same. Is not all this, too, in essential 
harmony with those Scriptures which speak of the dead as 
coming up from earth and sea? What other form of speech 
could so well express that identity which we have found to be 
so real ? — Rev. Henry M. G?'out. 

THE RESURRECTION BODY WILL HAVE MARVELLOUS ENDOWMENTS. 

This doctrine of the resurrection has a vast and blessed 
meaning, which it is impossible to adequately state, much less 
to overdraw. It means the leaving of the perplexities and diffi- 
culties and toils of this life which follow the curse of Adam's 
sin. From the first, man has sought to dishonor, to deface, to 
cripple his body in every possible way. An infinitude of cease- 
less mortification comes to one class on account of bodily defi- 
ciencies and deformities. Death is hailed by them as a deliver- 
ance from bondage. To be rid of all pains, and fevers, and 
aches, and hunger, and cold, from year's end to year's end — 
this is what the resurrection brings. The body sown in weak- 
ness shall be raised in power; sown in dishonor it shall be 
raised in glory. It is impossible to know what that means, but 
this much is certain — that the body will have marvellous endow- 
ments. It will doubtless be subject to the behests of our will, 
suffering no hindrance of force or matter. And our intellectual 
capabilities will undoubtedly exceed those of our bodies. Our 
senses will never be deceived; we shall never be misled by false 
impressions, never form false judgments, never mistake half 
truths for whole ones. We shall see things as they are, and, 
not unlikely, all our perceptions shall be so quickened that what 
is now obtainable only by a slow and laborious process will 
there be apprehended as if by intuition. In some sense we 



GOOD WIN— CHALMERS— KNOX. 



423 



shall see as God sees, and know as God knows; and these 
powers and faculties will keep on increasing and improving 
through the endless cycles of eternity. And all this as centred 
in and conditioned upon the visible return of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. On such a coming hang all our hopes. Let all hold it 
fast, knowing by the clear witness of the word that " when he 
shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." 

— E. P. Goodwin, D. D. 

MAN WILL RISE WITH THE SAME MORAL CHARACTER. 

The character wherewith we sink into the grave at death is 
the very character wherewith we shall reappear on the day of 
resurrection. The character which habit has fixed and strength- 
ened through life, adheres, it would seem, to the disembodied 
spirit through the mysterious interval which separates the day 
of our dissolution from the day of our account — when it will 
again stand forth, the very image and substance of what it was, 
to the inspection of the Judge and the awards of the judgment- 
seat. The moral lineaments which be graven on the tablet of 
the inner man, and which every day of an unconverted life 
makes deeper and more indelible than before, will retain the 
very impress they have gotten — unaltered and uneffaced by the 
transition from our present to our future state of existence. 
There will be a dissolution, and then a reconstruction of the 
body from the sepulchral dust into which it had mouldered. 
But there will be neither a dissolution nor a renovation of the 
spirit, which, indestructible both in character and essence, will 
weather and retain its identity on the midway passage between 
this world and the next: so that at the time of quitting its 
earthly tenement we may say, that if unjust now, it will be 
unjust still; if filthy now, it will be filthy still; if righteous now, 
it will be righteous still ; and if holy now, it will be holy still. 

— TJwmas Chalmers. 

SIMILITUDE OF THE RESURRECTION. 

The like similitude the apostle Paul uses against such as 
called the resurrection in doubt; because by natural judgment 






424 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

they could not apprehend that flesh once putrefied, and dis- 
solved as it were into other substances, should rise again and 
return again to the same substance and nature. " fool," saith 
he, " that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die ; 
and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that 
shall be, but bare corn, as it falleth, of wheat, or some other, but 
God giveth it a body as it pleaseth him, even to every seed his 
own body." In which words and sentence the apostle sharply 
rebukes the gross ignorance of the Corinthians, who began to 
call in doubt the chief article of our faith, the resurrection of the 
flesh after it was once dissolved, because that natural judged, as 
he said, reclaimed (cried out against) thereto. He reproves, I 
say, their gross ignorance, because they might have seen and 
considered some proof and document thereof in the very order 
of nature ; for albeit the wheat, or other corn, cast in the 
earth, appears to die or putrefy, and so to be lost, yet we see 
that it is not perished, but that it fructifies to God's will and 
ordinance. 

Now if the power of God be so manifest in raising up of the 
fruits of the earth, unto which no particular promise is made by 
God, what shall be his power and virtue in raising up our 
bodies, seeing that thereto he is bound by the solemn promise 
of Jesus Christ, his eternal wisdom, and the verity itself that 
cannot lie ? Yea, seeing that the members must once commu- 
nicate with the glory of the Head, how shall our bodies, which 
are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones, lie still forever in 
corruption, seeing that our Head, Jesus Christ, is now exalted 
in his glory? Neither yet is this power and good-will of God 
to be restrained unto the last and general resurrection only, but 
we ought to consider it in the marvellous of his church, and in 
the raising up of the same from the very bottom of death, when 
by tyrants it has been oppressed from age to age. — John Knox. 



The blessed in the new covenant 
Shall rise up quickened, each one from his grave, 
Wearing again the garments of flesh, 
Ministers and messengers of life eternal. — Dante. 



TERTULLIAN. 



425 



SOME OF NATURE'S ANALOGIES. 

Day dies into night, and is buried everywhere in darkness. 
The glory of the world is obscured in the shadow of death : its 
entire substance is tarnished with blackness; all things become 
sordid, silent, stupid ; everywhere business ceases, and occupa- 
tions rest. And so over the loss of the night there is mourning. 
But yet it again revives, with its own beauty, its own dowry, its 
own sun, the same as ever, whole and entire, over all the world, 
slaying its own death, night — opening its own sepulchre, the 
darkness — coming forth the heir to itself, until the night also 
revives — it, too, accompanied with a retinue of its own. For the 
stellar rays are rekindled, which had been quenched in the 
morning glow; the distant groups of the constellations are 
again brought back to view, which the (day's) temporary inter- 
val had removed out of sight. Readorned also are the mirrors 
of the moon, which her monthly course had worn away. 

Winters and summers return, as do the spring-tide and au- 
tumn, with their resources, their routines, their fruits. Foras- 
much as earth receives its instruction from heaven to clothe the 
trees which had been stripped, to color the flowers afresh, to 
spread the grass again, to reproduce the seed which had been 
consumed, and not to reproduce them until consumed. Won 
drous method ! from a defrauder to be a preserver ; in order to 
restore, it takes away ; in order to guard, it destroys ; that it may 
make whole, it injures ; and that it may enlarge, it first lessens. 
This process, indeed, renders back to us fuller and richer bless- 
ings than it deprived us of — by a destruction which is profit, 
by an injury which is advantage, and by a loss which is gain. 
In a word, I would say, all creation is instinct with renewal. 
Whatever you may chance upon, has already existed; whatever 
you have lost, returns again without fail. All things return to 
their former state, after having gone out of sight; all things 
begin after they have ended; they come to an end for the 
very purpose of 'coming into existence again. Nothing perishes 
but with a view to salvation. The whole, therefore, of this re- 
volving order of things bears witness to the resurrection of the 
dead. In his works did God write it, before he wrote it in the 



426 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

Scriptures ; he proclaimed it in his mighty deeds earlier than 
in his inspired words. He first sent Nature to you as a teacher, 
meaning to send Prophecy also as a supplemental instructor, that, 
being Nature's disciple, you may more easily believe Prophecy > 
and without hesitation accept (its testimony), when you come to 
hear what you have seen already on every side ; nor doubt that 
God, whom you have discovered to be the restorer of all things, 
is likewise the reviver of the flesh. And surely, as all things 
rise again for man, for whose use they have been provided — 
but not for man except for his flesh also — how happens it that 
(the flesh) itself c 1 perish utterly, because of which and for the 
service of which nothing comes to naught. — Tertitllian. 

THE OPENING GRAVES. 

Various scriptural accounts say that the work of grave-break- 
ing will begin with the blast of trumpets and shoutings ; whence 
I take it that the first intimation of the day will be a sound from 
heaven such as has never before been heard. It may not be so 
very loud, but it will be penetrating. There are mausoleums so 
deep that undisturbed silence has slept there ever since the day 
when the sleepers were left in them. The great noise shall 
strike through them. Among the corals of the sea, miles deep, 
where the shipwrecked rest, the sound will strike. No one will 
mistake it for thunder or the blast of earthly minstrelsy. There 
will be heard the voice of the uncounted millions of the dead, 
who come rushing out of the gates of eternity, flying toward the 
tomb, crying : " Make way ! O grave, give us back our body ! 
We gave it to you in corruption; surrender it now in incor- 
ruption." Thousands of spirits arising from the field of Waterloo, 
and from among the rocks of Gettysburg, and from among the 
passes of South Mountain. A hundred thousand are crowding 
Greenwood. On this grave three spirits meet, for there were 
three bodies in that tomb ; over that family vault twenty spirits 
hover, for there were twenty bodies. From New York to Liver- 
pool, at every few miles on the sea route, a group of hundreds 
of spirits coming down to the water to meet their bodies. See 
that multitude ! — that is where the " Central America " sank, 



TALMAGE—BUNTWG. 427 

And yonder multitude ! — that is where the " Pacific " went down. 
Found at last ! That is where the " City of Boston " sank. And 
yonder the " President " went down. A solitary spirit alights 
on yonder prairie — that is where a traveller perished in the 
snow. The whole air is full of spirits : spirits flying north, spirits 
flying south, spirits flying east, spirits flying west. Crash ! goes 
Westminster Abbey, as all its dead kings, and orators, and 
poets get up. Strange commingling of spirits searching among 
the ruins. William Wilberforce, the good ; and Queen Eliza- 
beth, the bad. Crash ! go the Pyramids, and the monarchs 
of Egypt rise out of the heart of the desert. Snap ! go the 
iron gates of the modern vaults. The country graveyard 
will look like a rough-ploughed field as the mounds break 
open. All the kings of the earth ; all the senators ; all the great 
men ; all the beggars ; all the armies — victors and vanquished ; 
all the ages — barbaric and civilized ; all those who were chopped 
by guillotine, or simmered in the fire, or rotted in dungeons ; all 
the infants of a day ; all the octogenarians — all ! all ! Not one 
straggler left behind. All ! all ! And now the air is darkened 
with the fragments of bodies that are coming together from the 
opposite corners of the earth. Lost limbs finding their mate — 
bone to bone, sinew to sinew — until every joint is reconstructed, 
and every arm finds its socket, and the amputated limb of the 
surgeon's table shall be set again at the point from which it was 
severed. A surgeon told me that after the battle of Bull Run 
he amputated limbs, throwing them out of the window, until the 
pile reached up to the window-sill. All those fragments will 
have to take their places. Those who were born blind shall 
have eyes divinely kindled; those who were lame shall have a 
limb substituted. In all the hosts of the resurrected not one 
eye missing ; not one foot clogged ; not one arm palsied ; not one 
tongue dumb ; not one ear deaf. — Dr. Talmage. 

RESURRECTION OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

The dead who are in Christ cannot die eternally. On the 
contrary, he is pledged expressly by his covenant, and vir- 
tually by his resurrection and ascension, to quicken, spiritualize, 



428 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

and beautify their material frame, to render it a meet receptacle 
for the spirit, and to reunite them in everlasting beatitude. 

His "dead [men] shall live." "Because I live, ye shall live 
also." (See Rom. viii. 10, n.) In these and other passages, 
you observe, the promised resurrection of the righteous at the 
last day is represented as resulting, if not as to its certainty, yet 
as to its glory, from their being " dead in Christ." The intima- 
tion plainly is, that they shall be raised with marks of eminent 
honor, as well as to a condition of eternal blessedness. 

Such is the doctrine of other parts of Scripture. " I will raise 
him up at the last day." Christ will officially quicken all the 
dead. This must mean, therefore, that his dead will be specially 
distinguished — perhaps that he will employ his angels to raise 
the wicked ; but " I " myself, in a marked and more personal 
manner, will raise my own. Yes ; he will then, as now, know 
" them that are his " among a thousand. He has sealed their 
bodies, as well as their souls, " unto the day of redemption ; " 
he has stamped their crumbling clay with traces of identity 
which all the ravages of corruption, changes of form, acci- 
dents of dispersion, will not be able to obliterate. They sleep 
at his feet ; and when they awake, they shall at once behold his 
" face in righteousness," — besides this, the fashioning of the 
body " like unto his glorious body," the adaptation of it to be a 
help, not a hindrance, a glory, not a dishonor, an immortal de- 
light, not, as in the case of the wicked, an eternal torment to the 
soul ; and the welcoming of both, in the presence of assembled 
millions, and with a train often thousand angels, from the judg- 
ment-seat to his own throne and side. 

We are taught, further, that he will put distinguished honor 
on his dead. " The dead in Christ shall rise first." They 
" which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall 
not prevent [not be before] them that are asleep." As these 
have tasted the bitterness of death, and undergone the abase- 
ment of its immediate consequences, he has resolved to confer 
on them a mark of distinction over those who do not " sleep." 

Thus, in the case of his own people, according to principles 
already intimated, death " is gain " — gain, observe, not merely 



9 UNTING— THOMAS. 



429 



upon life as it now is, a life of uncertainty and suffering, but 
even upon an immortality unconnected with a death Christ. It 
shall turn out, that it will be better for us to go to glory through 
the grave, than without dying : in other words, that the suffer- 
ings and shame of death shall be more than compensated by 
consolations of dying hours, by the distinction which the resur- 
rection will confer, and by the after glories of that eternal life 
which is by Jesus Christ our Lord. 

— Memorials of W. M. Bunting. 

A CHEMICAL PROCESS ILLUSTRATING THE RESURRECTION. 

So it is that out of these elementary particles human bodies 
are builded, and out of nature's storehouse God. will in some 
way reinvest the spirit with a material organism. We can well 
believe that this is possible in the light of what chemistry can 
do. There are many things which the chemist can do which we 
would not believe to be possible did we not know them to be 
facts. I think it is Dr. Brown who quotes from Mr. Hallett the 
story of a gentleman who was something of a chemist, who had 
given a faithful servant a silver cup. The servant dropped the 
cup in a vessel of what he supposed to be pure water, but which 
in reality was aqua fortis. He let it lie there, not thinking it 
could receive any harm, but, returning some time after, saw the 
cup gradually dissolving. He was loudly bewailing his loss 
when he was told that his master could restore the cup for him. 
He could not believe it. " Do you not see," he said, " that it 
is dissolving before our sight ? " But at last the master was 
brought to the spot. He called for some salt water, which he 
poured into the vessel, and told the servant to watch. By-and- 
by the silver cup began to gather as a white powder at the 
bottom. When the deposit was complete, the master said to 
the servant, " Pour off the liquid, gather up this dust, have it 
melted and run together, then take it to the workman and let 
him hammer the cup again." You may take gold ; you may 
file it down to a powder, mix it with other metals, throw it intc 
the fire, do what you will with it, and the chemist will brin^ 
back with certainty the exact gold. 






43Q RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

Thus our bodies are built up by fruits from the tropics, by 
grain from the prairies. The flesh that roamed the plains as 
cattle has become part of us. If God can build up human 
bodies here, can he not find and convert the dust that we put 
away in the grave, and bring it back to forms of life ? In my 
judgment, God is able to preserve even the particles of the 
human body and restore them. So far as the power is con- 
cerned, it can be done, and will be done, as God may think best. 

— H. W. Thomas, D. D. 

THE RESURRECTION OF DAMNATION. 

It is probable that as the wicked are, in the last day, to be 
opposite in character, so will they be, in many respects, opposite 
in body. Are the bodies of the righteous glorious — those of the 
wicked will be repelling. You know how bad passions flatten 
the skull and disfigure the body. There he comes ! up out of 
the graveyard — the drunkard ; the blotches on his body flaming 
out in worse disfigurement, and his tongue bitten by an all- 
consuming thirst for drink — which he cannot get, for there are 
no dram-shops in hell. There comes up the lascivious and un- 
clean wretch, reeking with filth that made him the horror of the 
city hospital, now wriggling across the cemetery lots — the con- 
sternation of devils. Here are all the faces of the unpardoned 
dead. The last line of attractiveness is dashed out, and the eye 
is wild, malignant, fierce, infernal ; the cheek aflame ; the mouth 
distorted with blasphemies. If the glance of the faces of the 
righteous was like a new morning, the glance of the faces of the 
lost will be like another night falling on midnight. If, after the 
close of a night's debauch, a man gets up and sits on the side 
of the bed — sick, exhausted and horrified with a review of his 
past ; or rouses up in delirium tremens, and sees serpents crawl- 
ing over him, or devils dancing about him — what will be the 
feeling of a man who gets up out of his bed on the last morning 
of earth, and reviews an unpardoned past, and, instead of im- 
aginary evils crawling over him and flitting before him, finds 
the real frights and pains and woes of the resurrection of 
damnation? — T. Dewitl Talmage. 



ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON. 431 

OBJECTIONS. 

There are but two objections, that I know of, against the 
resurrection, that are of any consideration. 

First, against the resurrection, in general, of the same body. 
It is pretended impossible, after the bodies of men are mouldered 
into dust, and by infinite accidents have been scattered up and 
down the world, and have undergone a thousand changes, to 
re-collect and rally together the very same parts of which they 
consisted before. This the heathens used to object to the 
primitive Christians ; for which reason they also used to burn 
the bodies of the martyrs, and to scatter their ashes in the air, 
to be blown about by the wind, in derision of their hopes of a 
resurrection. 

I know not how strong malice might make this objection to 
appear ; but surely in reason it is very weak, for it wholly de- 
pends upon a gross mistake of the nature of God and his provi- 
dence, as if it did not extend to the smallest things ; as if God 
did not know all things that he hath made, and had them not 
always in his view and perfectly under his command ; and as if 
it were a trouble and burden to infinite knowledge and power 
to understand and order the least things, whereas infinite 
knowledge and power can know and manage all things with as 
much ease as we can understand and order any one thing. 

So that this objection is grounded upon a low and false ap- 
prehension of the Divine nature, and is only fit for Epicurus and 
his herd, who fancied to themselves a sort of slothful and un- 
thinking deities, whose happiness consisted in their laziness and 
a privilege to do nothing. I proceed, therefore, to the 

Second objection, which is more close and pressing ; and this 
is levelled against the resurrection in some particular instances. 
I will mention but two, by which all the rest may be measured 
and answered. 

One is of those who are drowned in the sea, and their bodies 
eaten up by fishes, and turned into their nourishment; and those 
tishes perhaps eaten afterward by men, and converted into the 
substance of their bodies. 

The other is of the cannibals, some of whom, as credible rela- 



4 3 2 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

tions tell us, have lived wholly or chiefly on the flesh of men, 
and consequently the whole or the greatest part of the substance 
of their bodies is made of the bodies of other men. In these and 
the like cases, wherein one man's body is supposed to be turned 
into the substance of another man's body, how should both 
these at the resurrection each recover his own body? So that 
this objection is like that of the Sadducees to our Saviour, con- 
cerning a woman that had seven husbands ; they ask, " Whose 
wife of the seven shall she be at the resurrection ? " So here, 
when several have had the same body, whose shall it be at the 
resurrection ? and how shall they be supplied that have it not ? 

This is the objection ; and in order to answering of it I shall 
premise these two things : 

i. That the body of man is not a constant and permanent 
thing, always continuing in the same state, and consisting of the 
same matter, but a successive thing, which is continually spend- 
ing and continually renewing itself, every day losing something 
of the matter which it had before and gaining new ; so that most 
men have new bodies oftener than they have new clothes, only 
with this difference, that we change our clothes commonly at 
once, but our bodies by degrees. 

And this is undeniably certain from experience. For so much 
as our bodies grow, so much new matter is added to them over 
and beside the repairing of what is continually spent ; and after 
a man be come to his full growth, so much of his food as every 
day turns into nourishment, so much of his yesterday's body is 
usually wasted and carried off by insensible perspiration ; that 
is, breathed out at the pores of his body; which, according to 
the static experiment of Sanctorius, a learned physician, who, 
for several years together, weighed himself exactly every day, is 
(as I remember) according to the proportion of five to eight of 
all that a man eats and drinks. Now, according to this propor- 
tion, every man must change his body several times in a year. 
(Once in seven years is a more recent calculation. — Editor)) 

It is true, indeed, the more solid parts of the body, as the 
bones, do not change so often as the fluid and fleshy ; but that 
they also do change is certain, because they grow, and whatever 



TILLOTSON— POTTS. 433 

grows is nourished and spends, because otherwise it would not 
need to be repaired. 

2. The body which a man hath at any time of his life is as 
much his own body as that which he hath at his death ; so that 
if the very matter of his body which a man hath at any time of 
his life be raised, it is as much his own and the same body as 
that which he had at his death, and commonly much more per- 
fect ; because they who die of lingering sickness or old age are 
usually mere skeletons when they die, so that there is no reason 
to suppose that the very matter of which our bodies consist at 
the time of our death shall be that which shall be raised, that 
being commonly the worst and most imperfect body of all the 
rest. 

These two things being premised, the answer to this objection 
cannot be difficult. For as to the more solid and firm parts of 
the body, as the skull and bones, it is not, I think, pretended 
that the cannibals eat them; and if they did, so much of the 
matter even of these solid parts wastes away in a few years, as, 
being collected together, would supply them many times over. 
And as for the fleshy and fluid parts, these are so very often 
changed and renewed that we can allow the cannibals to eat 
them all up and to turn them all into nourishment, and yet no 
man need contend for want of a body of his own at the resur- 
rection, viz., any of those bodies which he had ten or twenty 
years before, which are every whit as good and as much his own 
as that which was eaten. — Archbishop Tillotson. 

GENERAL REMARKS. 

There is perhaps no doctrine of Holy Scripture, as to the fact 
of which all evangelical scholars agree, while as to the manner 
of which they so much differ, as the doctrine of the resurrection. 
The old creeds, as expressed by Tertullian, Knox and others, 
in the foregoing pages, that the identical molecular constituents 
of the body which is laid in the grave shall be raised again, the 
vivid scene of which is so graphically pictured by Talmage 
(page 426), and so ably defended by Tillotson (pages 431-433), 
has undergone some modification in these latter times, being 
28 



4 24 RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. 

utterly antagonized by a few writers, who conceive the resurrec- 
tion body to be absolutely spiritual — a sort of a new creation 
rather than resurrection — and in no sense related to the present 
material body. Such speculations are as far removed from the 
plain teachings of Scripture as they are from the general faith 
of the church. The Bible doctrine of the resurrection is a resur- 
rection of the dead, and it is the material body which dies, so 
that if that be not essentially raised, there is no resurrection of 
the dead, and the Christian faith is vain. 

Next to this extreme spiritualistic theory is what may be de- 
nominated the scientific theory, as expressed by Joseph Cook 
(page 417), that the soul has a non-atomic, ethereal enswathe- 
ment which accompanies it in its state beyond the grave; and 
closely allied to this is the idea advanced by H. M. Grout (page 
419), that while the soul beyond death is disembodied until the 
general resurrection, it may have an ethereal covering, " a white 
raiment," to give it shape and relation to other beings, and that 
in the resurrection the vital principle, or organic force which now 
sustains our physical bodies, will wake anew, and attract from 
the slumbering dust the materials provided for its everlasting 
habitation. 

These theories may be accepted for what they are worth, but 
we wish to call attention to the "true theory of the resurrec- 
tion," as given by Ma-ttison (page 413), that all which is essential 
to the corporeal identity of the body at death will be raised again 
to life, and go to constitute the resurrection body. Thus even 
this "vile body" shall be changed and made like unto the glori- 
ous body of Christ. This will be " a body" in the proper sense 
of the word, and yet, as Wakefield expresses it (page 417), it will 
be so far spiritual as to obviate the necessity of animal functions, 
such as characterize the present natural body; and having neither 
flesh nor blood, it may, with its glorified companion spirit, in- 
herit the kingdom of God forever. — The Editor. 




A theme of glowing, inspired description and solemn warning, and 
which has roused the human mind to the loftiest contemplation. 

[435] 



"And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied o! 
these things, saying, Behold, the Lord eometh with ten 
thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and 
to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their 
ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and 
of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have 
spoken against him." Jude 14, 18. 

The judgment! the judgment I the thrones are all set, 
Where the Lamb and the white-vested elders are met! 
All flesh is at once in the sight of the Lord, 
And the doom of eternity hangs on his word I 



*436) 




THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

MAN'S SENSE OF ACCOUNTABILITY. 

HE sense of moral obligation is a sense of accountability 
which always looks to the future. That is to say, when- 
ever one does anything which he apprehends as right 
or wrong, that doing invariably awakens expectations 
of future results, results immediately connected with his 
conduct considered as right or wrong. The idea of moral law 
involves this expectation. " Moral law is a form of expression 
denoting the order of sequence established between the moral 
quality of actions and their results." Every idea of moral desert, 
of responsibility, of accountability, or of moral government in 
any of its respects, involves an expectation of future results, 
results that are sure to ensue. 

It is true that, " because sentence against an evil work is not 
executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully 
set in them to do evil ; " but this comes not of man's moral 
nature in its normal condition, nor is it a conviction of his 
rational nature ; it is purely, wholly abnormal. Both the rational 
and the moral natures give sure indications of a coming retribu- 
tion, and no apprehensions of the human mind are entertained 
with a firmer conviction of certainty than are these expectations. 
Every bad man is sure that his bad conduct will sooner or later 
come back to trouble him ; and every good man, though he ap- 
prehends no merit in himself, feels perfectly confident that it is 
not in vain that he has cleansed his hands in innocency, and 
walked in righteousness before God. But these expectations 
are only partially realized in the present life, and in many in- 
stances are not realized at all. The mixed condition of the life 
that now is, the unequal distribution of good and ill, the fact 
that the righteous suffer and the wicked are in prosperity, and 

(437) 



438 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

especially that many men end their earthly lift perpetrating 
most atrocious crimes, are, to all minds, palpable evidence that 
retribution is reserved for a future state. Indeed, however good 
or however bad, whatever be his earthly experience, whether of 
pleasure or of pain, of prosperity or of adversity, is fully satisfied 
that the account of his responsibilities is not fully adjusted here. 
All, all, intuitively, rationally, from the necessities of their nature, 
and from the obvious facts in the case, make habitual reference 
of the events of life to far-off and future results. 

Miner Raymond, D. ,D. 

FOREBODINGS OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT AMONG THE HEATHEN. 

We have every reason for believing that much the same views 
of death, and the same apprehensions of future retribution as 
now prevail, have ever existed among mankind. In all ages, 
too, and in all creeds, the representations of the nature of this 
future punishment have been of the most terrific kind, as though 
the imagination, for this purpose, had been taxed to its utmost 
powers. Fire, and chains, and utter darkness, and similitudes 
of ever ungratified desire and of ever raging passion, have always 
formed a part of the dread machinery of Hades. Leaving out 
of the account the solemn confirmation of the doctrine which 
may be derived from the fearful imagery employed by our 
Saviour, and taking mto view only the heathen world, we may 
well ask the question, Whence came all this ? The great prob- 
lem is for them to solve who assert that the doctrine of future 
punishment is contrary to the Scriptures, the reason, and the 
feelings. Whence, then, came it, in the face of all these oppos- 
ing influences ? Men are not fond of what is irrational for its 
own sake, and they certainly do not love their own misery. 

— Taylor Lewis , LL. D. 

JUDGMENT IS CERTAIN. 

We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. 
Having been born, we must die ; having died, we must be judged. 
Judgment is as sure as death. It is part of our lot : it is not 
left for us to say whether we will appt ar or not. You have 



SO UTHGA TE— CO WLES—SA URIN. 439 

watched while a soul was passing from the body. You knew 
the man did not want to die ; but gradually, steadily, with the 
quiet of assured strength, something drew the spirit out into the 
other world. Thus we come before the Judge. The trumpet 
sounds, the dead appear. There is no confusion, no sobs, or 
cries, or struggles ; a calm, irresistible impulse sets every soul 
face to face with Him that sitteth upon the throne. Already on 
earth conscience warns us of a time of giving account. It holds 
us back from sins we love. To the determined will it whispers 
of another will which it cannot overcome. This premonition 
of judgment makes the wicked like the troubled sea when it 
cannot rest, heaved by the convulsions of a distant, unseen 
storm. — Rev. Charles M. Sonthgate. 

THE PURPOSE OF THE JUDGMENT. 

The final judgment, according to the Bible, has in view the 
following objects : To convince the ungodly of the justice of 
their doom ; To make a general and grand impression upon the 
intelligent universe of the perfect righteousness of God in mak- 
ing an eternal distinction in the final allotment of the righteous 
and the wicked. Jude teaches the former explicitly ; Matt. xxv. 
31-46, the latter. Now obviously both these ends are best 
secured by a general judgment in which the case of each class 
is investigated and decided, and in which countless hosts — not 
to say all the intelligent beings in the universe of God — are 
present. O, it will be an august day ! — Professor Henry Cozvles. 

THE DISORDERS OF SOCIETY REQUIRE IT. 

Do not confine yourself to those disorders which strike the 
senses, astonish reason, and subvert faith itself. Reflect on 
other irregularities, which, although they are less shocking to 
sense, and seemingly of much less consequence, are yet no less 
deserving the attention of the Judge of the whole earth, and 
require, no less than the first, a future judgment. 

I grant, those notorious disorders, which human laws cannot 
repress, afford proofs of a future judgment. A tyrant executes 
on a gibbet a poor, unhappy man, whom the pain of hunger, 



44Q THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

and the frightful apprehensions of sudden death, forced to break 
open a house. Here, if you will, disorder is punished, and 
society is satisfied. But who shall satisfy the just vengeance 
of society on this mad tyrant ? This very tyrant, at the head 
of a hundred thousand thieves, ravages the whole world; he 
pillages on the right and on the left; he violates the most 
sacred rights, the most solemn treaties; he knows neither 
religion nor good faith. Go, see, follow his steps: countries 
desolated, plains covered with the bodies of the dead, palaces 
reduced to ashes, and people run mad with despair. Inquire 
for the author of all these miseries. Will you find him, think 
you, confined in a dark dungeon, or expiring on a wheel ? Lo ! 
he sits on a throne, in a superb, royal palace ; nature and art 
contribute to his pleasures ; a circle of courtiers minister to his 
passions, and erect altars to him, whose equals in iniquity, yea, 
if I may be allowed to say so, whose inferiors in vice have 
justly suffered the most infamous punishments. And where is 
divine justice all this time ? What is it doing? I answer, "After 
death comes judgment." 

The argument may be extended a great deal farther ; we may 
add thousands of disorders, which every day are seen in society, 
against which men can make no laws, and which cannot be 
redressed until the great day of judgment, when God will give 
clear evidence of all^ 

Have human laws ever been made against hypocrites ? See 
that man, artfully covering himself with the veil of religion, that 
hypocrite, who excels his art ; behold his eyes, what seraphical 
looks they roll towards heaven ! Observe his features, made 
up, if I may venture to say so, of those of Moses, Ezra, Daniel, 
and Nehemiah ! See his vivacity, or his flaming zeal, shall I 
call it ? to maintain the doctrines of religion, to forge thunder^ 
bolts, and to pour out anathemas against heretics ! — not one 
grain of religion, not the least shadow of piety in all his whole 
conversation. It is a party-spirit, or a sordid interest, or a bar- 
barous disposition to revenge, which animates him, and produces 
all his pretended piety. And yet I hear everybody exclaim : 
* He is a miracle of religion ! he is a pillar of the church." I 



SAUK IN— CURRY. 



441 



see altars everywhere erecting to this man ; panegyrists are com- 
posing his encomium ; flowers are gathering to bestrew over his 
tomb. And the justice of God, what is it doing? My text tells 
you, After death comes judgment. 

Have human laws ever been made against the ungrateful ? 
While I was in prosperity I studied to procure happiness to a 
man who seemed entirely devoted to me, . . . but when fortune 
abandoned me, and adopted him, he suffered me to languish in 
poverty. . . . Who shall punish his crime ? 

Have men made laws against cowards ? I do not mean cow- 
ardice in war, ... I speak of soul cowardice, which makes a 
man forsake an oppressed innocent sufferer, and keep a crimi- 
nal silence in regard to the oppressor. Pursue this train of 
thought, and you will everywhere find arguments for a future 
judgment; because there will everywhere appear disorders, 
which establish the necessity of it. — James Saurin. 

A DAY OF JUDGMENT PROCLAIMED. 

The New Testament prophecies, literally construed, do most 
certainly assure us of the coming of a spectacular day of judg- 
ment, with its accompaniments of a general resurrection, and of 
an innumerable assembly of angels and men, and the pageantry 
of a judgment-seat — an assize of the universe; the whole to ter- 
minate in the eternal doom of the devil and his angels, and in 
the perdition of ungodly men ; after which the righteous of the 
earth shall be received into the kingdom of Christ's glory, to be 
forever with him. This glorious imagery has been before the 
imagination of the church all through the centuries. It has been 
made the subject of artistic representations in sculpture and 
architecture, and painting and poetry. It has been formulated 
into its prayers and liturgies, and sung in its hymnology, with 
the accompaniment of solemn chants and rapturous songs. And 
the imagery of that sublime drama has been largely and very 
effectively used to awaken men's consciences to a lively and 
wholesome sense of the necessity that is upon them to live in 
constant preparation for the coming of that day. 

No doubt these sublime prophetic images point to infinitely 



442 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

more sublime realities, to all of which, in their appointed time 
and order, we shall be introduced. — Daniel Curry, D. D. 

THE GREAT SURPRISE. 

Never since the foundation of the earth has there been a day 
like this, in the surprise and terror with which it will break upon 
the thoughtless millions of the population. Business and pleas- 
ure will occupy the minds of men as usual up to the close of the 
preceding day. The sun will rise and set with the same placid 
majesty, and fling his smiling radiance with the same bountiful 
profusion on this devoted world as he sinks beneath the horizon. 
Myriads will go to rest in peace, dreaming of future years of 
wealth and happiness. But at midnight the loud blast of the 
archangel's trump will awake them to sleep no more, and rush- 
ing in consternation to their window, they will see the heavens 
on fire. The worldling, elated with schemes of opulence and 
splendor, will suddenly find his visions dispelled by the light 
of eternity, and the despairing cry, " The Judge is come ! " The 
nuptial ceremony will be broken off half done, and the rejoicing 
banquet scattered by the terror-striking spectacle of the great 
white throne. The astounded senate will suddenly break up at 
the crash of the conflicting elements, and, hurrying away in wild 
confusion, see that the Great Legislator is come. The ermined 
judge and the manacled prisoner will hear themselves alike sum- 
moned without ceremony to the great tribunal. The voluptuary,, 
plethoric at the glutton's feast, drunken at the bacchanalian 
orgies, or giddy at the midnight dance, or folded in the harlot's 
embrace, will be startled, Belshazzar-like, from his sensual 
stupor by the pealing thunder and the trumpet's sound. The 
miser, counting his gold, or reckoning his profits, will be panic- 
struck by the knell that tells him gold has no more value, and 
his priceless soul is lost, forever lost, in seeking a bursted 
bubble. The procrastinating trifler, dreaming of mercy after 
years of worldly pleasure, will be filled with dismay to see that 
the day of grace is past and the hour of retribution come. The 
anxious speculator, the busy merchant, the thriving tradesman, 
racking imagination with schemes of gain, panting to reach the 



COOKE— L UTHER— TA YL OR. 



443 



goal of wealth, and revel in earthly aggrandizement, without one 
thought of God or eternity intruding on the vision of anticipated 
bliss, will be petrified with terror to find the delusive mirage 
break up before the glare of the flaming skies and the catas- 
trophe of a ruined world. The atheist, who denied God's being, 
will be appalled at the sight of his person ; the faithless steward, 
who said, " My Lord delayeth his coming," and the sceptic, 
who sneeringly asked, " Where is the promise of his coming? " 
will alike be struck with horror when the rending heavens re- 
veal his presence. The Demases who have forsaken him for 
the world, the Judases who have betrayed for silver, and all the 
herd of apostates and blasphemers who have despised his name 
and trampled on his blood, will stand aghast when the great day 
of his wrath shall break upon their sight. 

No day was ever equal to this in the awful scenes it ushers in, 
and the sudden terror and the despairing agony it excites. It 
was an awful night in Egypt when every family rose up to be- 
wail its first-born struck with death. It was a day of awful 
vengeance when the siege of Jerusalem closed with the crash 
of a ruined city over one million one hundred thousand dead 
bodies. It was a day of anger when the deluge . burst upon a 
degenerate world and overwhelmed its despairing millions in one 
common grave. But this day far exceeds them all, for it is the 
day when time has run its course, when universal retribution 
shall be rewarded, when God himself shall come down to take 
vengeance on them that know him not, and pent-up fires of 
divine wrath shall envelop the earth in a general conflagration. 

— William Cooke, D. D. 



A far different pomp from the pomp of the triumphal entry 
of kings and emperors, will that advent have. For the whole 
air shall be full of angels and of saints,, who shall shine brighter 
than the sun. — Martin Luther. 

THE UNIVERSAL TERROR. 

In final and extreme events, the multitude of sufferers does 
not lessen but increase the sufferings ; and when the first day 



444 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

of judgment happened, that (I mean) of the universal deluge 
of waters on the old world, the calamity swelled like the flood, 
and every man saw his friend perish, and the neighbors of his 
dwelling, and the relatives of his house, and the sharers of his 
joys, and yesterday's bride, and the new-born heir, the priest 
of the family, and the honor of the kindred, all dying or dead, 
drenched in water and the divine vengeance ; and then they had 
no place to flee unto, no man cared for their souls ; they had 
none to go unto for counsel, no sanctuary high enough to keep 
them from the vengeance that rained down from heaven ; and 
so it shall be at the day of judgment, when that world and this, 
and all that shall be born hereafter, shall pass through the same 
Red Sea, ai\xl be all baptized with the same fire, and be involved 
in the same cloud, in which shall be thunderings and terrors 
infinite ; every man's fear shall be increased by his neighbor's 
shrieks, and the amazement that all the world shall be in shall 
unite as the sparks of a raging furnace into a globe of fire, and 
shall roll on its own principles and increase by direct appearances 
and intolerable reflections. 

He that stands in a church-yard in the time of a great plague, 
and hears the passing bell perpetually telling the sad stories of 
death, and sees crowds of infected bodies pressing to their graves, 
and others sick and tremulous, and death dressed up in all the 
images of sorrow round about him, is not supported in his spirit 
by the variety of his sorrow, and at doomsday when the terrors 
are universal, besides that it is in itself so much greater, because 
it can affright the whole world, it is also made greater by com- 
munication and a sorrowful influence. Grief being then strongly 
infectious, when there is no variety of state, but an entire king- 
dom of fear ; and amazement is king of all our passions, and all 
the world its subjects ; and that shriek must needs be terrible, 
when millions of men and women, at the same instant, shall 
fearfully cry out, and the noise shall mingle with the trumpet 
of the archangel, with the thunders of the dying and groaning 
heavens, and the crack of the dissolving world, when the whole 
fabric of creation shall shake into dissolution and eternal ashes. 

— Jeremy Taylor. 



AD KINS— CLARKE. 



445 



PLACE OF THE JUDGMENT. 

On this point the Scriptures say nothing directly. Doubtless, 
however, the scene will occupy a definite locality. From the 
essential constitution of our minds we cannot separate events 
from localities ; and this original intuition of the soul must not 
be treated as illusory. It is divine. 

Some vain speculators, giving loose reign to imagination, 
have laid the scene in some remote, indeterminate sphere, or in 
some place in mid-aether fitted up for the occasion. Others 
have located it before the great white throne in heaven. The 
Jews, on the other hand, adopted the opinion, from the third 
chapter of Joel principally, that it will occur in the valley of 
Jehoshaphat, near Jerusalem. But the idea of locality demands 
space, as well as place, for the sublime proceeding. That valley, 
unless enlarged so much as to destroy its identity, could not 
contain the assembled " multitudes " (Joel iii. 14). 

That the central locality of the scene will be on the earth is 
a rational conclusion. It seems fit that this world, which has 
been the theatre of the life and actions and fortunes of the race, 
whose destinies are the main subject of decision, should be the 
scene of the judgment. Nowhere else could the moral effect be 
made so distinct and impressive. . . . 

Moreover, the Scriptures speak indirectly to this point. 
Christ, speaking from an earthly standpoint, represents himself 
as "coming in his glory "to judge the world (Matt. xxv. 31; 
xvi. 27). Coming to the earth is the only natural acceptation of 
this language. In correspondence with this, Paul, referring to 
the same grand event, speaks of " the revelation of the Lord 
Jesus Christ from heaven with the angels of his power" (2 
Thess. i. 7). Other passages contain the same local allusion. 

— E. Adkins, D. D. 

ORDER OF THE JUDGMENT DAY. 

Observe the order of this terribly glorious day: 1. Jesus, 
in all the dignity and splendor of his eternal majesty, shall de- 
scend from heaven to the mid region, what the apostle calls 
the " air," somewhere within the earth's atmosphere. 2. Then 



446 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

the shout or order shall be given for the dead to arise. 3. Next 
the archangel, as the herald of Christ, shall repeat the order, 
"Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment!" 4. When all the 
dead in Christ are raised, then the " trumpet shall sound," as the 
signal for them all to flock together to the throne of Christ. It 
was by the sound of the trumpet that the solemn assemblies, 
under the law, were convoked ; and to such convocations there 
seems to be here an allusion. 5. When the dead in Christ are 
raised, their vile bodies being made like unto his glorious body, 
then, 6. Those who are alive shall be changed, and made im- 
mortal. 7. These shall be " caught up together with them to 
meet the Lord in the air." 8. We may suppose that the judg- 
ment will now be set, and the books opened, and the dead judged 
out of the things written in those books. 9. The eternal states 
of quick and dead being thus determined, then all who shall be 
found to have " made a covenant with him by sacrifice," and to 
have washed their robes, and " made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb," shall be taken to his eternal glory, and "be for- 
ever with the Lord." What an inexpressibly terrific glory will 
then be exhibited ! I forbear to call in here the descriptions 
which men of a poetic turn have made of this terrible scene, 
because I cannot trust to their correctness ; and it is a subject 
which we should speak of and contemplate as nearly as possible 
in the words of Scripture. — Dr. Adam Clarke. 

BIBLICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF THE JUDGMENT. 

While many sublime passages of Old Testament Scripture 
have an undoubted application to Jewish temporalities, there are 
others which can have only a primary application of this kind, 
and which find their higher and more significant fulfilment in 
the introduction, progress, and triumph of the Messiah's king- 
dom, and the scenes amid which the Christian dispensation shall 
be brought to a close. Thus the following, while the reader 
may see in it primarily the destruction of Jerusalem and all the 
courts of the temple, the ten-fold repetition of the word " day " 
points unmistakably to more astounding events than accom- 
panied even the bloody destruction of the rebel city : " The great 



j. h. potts. 447 

day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the 
voice of the day of the Lord : the mighty man shall cry there 
bitterly. That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and dis- 
tress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and 
gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the 
trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the 
high towers. And I will bring distress upon men, that they 
shall walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the 
Lord: and their blood shall be poured out as dust, and their 
flesh as the dung. Neither their silver nor their gold shall be 
able to deliver them in the day of the Lord's wrath ; but the 
whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he 
shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the 
land" (Zeph. i. 14-18). 

Or take the following as one among many that might be 
given. It is easy to recognize in these sublime figures of speech 
the total obscuration of a nation, whose sun should never rise 
again ; but it is quite as easy to discern a secondary application 
to the darkening of a greater than the Hebrew sun, and the de- 
struction of a land wider than that surrounded by the walls of 
Babylon : 

" Howl ye ; for the day of the Lord is at hand ; it shall come 
as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands 
be faint, and every man's heart shall melt : and they shall be 
afraid : pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them ; they shall 
be in pain as a woman that travaileth : they shall be amazed one 
at another ; their faces shall be as flames. Behold, the day of 
the Lord cometh, cruel both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay 
the land desolate : and he shall destroy the sinners thereof out 
of it. For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof 
shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going 
forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine, And I 
will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their 
iniquity ; and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, 
and will lay low the haughtiness of the terrible. Therefore I 
will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her 
place, in the wrath of the Lord of hosts, and in the day of his 
fierce anger" (Isa. xiiL 6— 13), 



443 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

The sanction given by our Lord and the evangelists to this 
Old Testament imagery, as applicable to the scenes of the judg- 
ment day, places the matter beyond cavil. Thus the following : 
"And they shall say to the mountains, Cover us ; and to the 
hills, Fall on us " (Hosea x. 8). Christ himself said, " Then 
shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us ; and to the 
hills, Cover us " (Luke xxiii. 30). So the Revelator pictures 
men of all classes, saying to the " mountains and rocks, Fall on 
us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne " 
(Rev. vi. 17). " In those days shall men seek death, and shall 
not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from 
them " (Rev. ix. 6). 

Again, " For God shall bring every work into judgment, with 
every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil " 
(Eccl. xii. 14). This Old Testament affirmation is almost liter- 
ally repeated by Paul — " For we must all appear before the 
judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things 
done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be 
good or bad " (2 Cor. v. 10). 

Space will not permit the further multiplication of instances 
of this kind. It is evident that the preachers and prophets of 
old had a far-off glimpse of this great and terrible day, and that 
their proclamations and prophecies served a God-designed part 
in preparing the minds of the chosen people for the fuller and 
clearer revelations of coming retribution. 

By far the most exhaustive and graphic inspired description 
of the judgment scene is that contained in the twenty-fifth chap- 
ter of Matthew, beginning with the twenty-first verse : 

"When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the 
holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his 
glory : and before him shall be gathered all nations : and he shall 
separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep 
from the goats : and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but 
the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on 
his right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you from the foundation of the world : for 1 
was a hungered, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and yc 



J. H. POTTS. ^q 

gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in : naked, and 
ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I was in prison, 
and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, 
saying, Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, and fed thee ? or 
thirsty, and gave thee drink ? when saw we thee a stranger, and 
took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? or when saw we thee 
sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall 
answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
have done it unto me. 

" Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart 
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 
and his angels : for I was a hungered, and ye gave me no meat: 
I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and 
ye took me not in : naked, and ye clothed me not : sick, and in 
prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer 
him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee a hungered, or athirst, or 
a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister 
unto thee ? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say 
unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, 
ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting pun- 
ishment : but the righteous into life eternal!' 

This passage discloses several points which may be briefly 
noted: I. Christ is to be the judge. God hath committed all 
judgment unto the Son. " He hath appointed a day, in the 
which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man 
whom he hath ordained ; whereof he hath given assurance unto 
all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead " (Acts xvii. 
31). 2. He will not appear, as in his first advent, with human 
disadvantages and limitations, but with power and great glory. 
3. He will not be surrounded simply by a few of the wise and 
good, but by all nations and generations of men. 4. By some 
all-comprehensive yet particular process he shall separate the 
uncounted hosts into two companies, one upon his right hand — 
place of honor — and the other on his left. 5. Each assignment 
will be for cause. The particular arguments given here are only 
samples. The list of reasons can be extended indefinitely. L'*fe 
29 



45 O THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

in relation to " one of the least " of Christ's disciples will be 
pregnant with immortal issues. The most obscure and insignifi- 
cant human history will furnish ample ground for acceptance, or 
rejection, by the all-righteous Judge. " Every man's work shall 
be made manifest : for the day shall declare it, because it shall 
be revealed by fire ; and the fire shall try every man's work of 
what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he hath built 
thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall 
be burned, he shall suffer loss : but he himself shall be saved : 
yet so as by fire" (i Cor. iii. 13-15). 

The prophet Daniel, in his wonderful vision of the Ancient 
of days sitting upon his throne which was like the fiery flame 
and his wheels as burning fire, saw thousand thousands minis- 
tering unto him and ten thousand times ten thousand standing 
before him : the judgment was set and the books were opened 
(Dan. vii. 9—1 1). John makes use of precisely the same expres- 
sion in his description of the judgment (Rev. xx. 11, 12). The 
point to which we would call attention is that the books were 
opened and the dead were judged out of those things which were 
written in the books. This may have a literal fulfilment. Into 
these books are transcribed by the recording angels every 
thought, word, and deed of every human being that comes into 
the world. Men think their thoughts, speak forth their words, 
and perform their deeds, in most instances, with little reference 
to this great revealing time, and the slight impressions quickly 
fade from their memories. Nevertheless, there is a fadeless 
record being kept, and it will confront each one at the judgment- 
seat of Christ. Malachi discloses some particulars respecting 
the method of keeping this book, and the happy interest the 
Lord has in those whose names are found therein : " Then they 
that feared the Lord spake often one to another : and the Lord 
hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written 
before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon 
his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in 
that day when I make up my jewels ; and I will spare them, as 
a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall he 
return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, 



y H. POTTS. 4^! 

between him that serveth God and him that serveth him 
not." 

The judgment will be a scene of extraordinary interest to 
saints, angels, and devils. All these classes of intelligences shall 
be there. The glorified saints shall be present, as appears from 
what is said in Rev. xi. 1 8 : " Thy wrath is come, and the time 
of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest 
give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, 
and them that fear thy name, small and great." That all the 
devils look forward to the judgment with anxious foreboding 
appears from the conversation which Jesus held with the legion 
confronting him at the tombs. "Art thou come hither to tor- 
ment us before the time?" They evidently knew of the great 
doctrine of the second coming of Christ, in the glory of the 
Father, with all the holy angels. Hence their consternation at 
meeting him so unexpectedly, and in such a manner. They 
knew that the time was coming when they should be cast into 
the bottomless pit of raging fire, but they also knew that the 
time had not yet arrived, and they seemed to dread lest they 
should experience the agony of everlasting burnings before the 
time. Saint Peter says (2 Peter ii. 4) : " The angels that sinned" 
"God spared not," "but cast them down to hell, and delivered 
them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." 

We cannot dwell longer upon this subject. The Bible is 
full of warning and exhortations in reference to this great and 
eventful day. It portrays to us the terrors of the wicked as 
they seek for death and find it not. This will be the time when 
the prophecy uttered by the wise man shall be fulfilled : " Be- 
cause I have called, and ye refused ; I have stretched out my 
hand, and no man regarded ; but ye have set at naught all my 
counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at 
your calamity ; I will mock when your fear comcth ; when your 
fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a 
whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then 
shall they call upon me, but I will not answer: they shall seek 
me early, but they shall not find me : for that they hated 
knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: they 



452 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

would none of my counsel : they despised all my reproof" 
(Prov. i. 24-30). 

As none can tell when his destiny shall be sealed for this 
day, for it will come practically to every soul as " a thief in the 
night," what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy con- 
versation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the com- 
ing of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall 
be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 
Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens 
and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness " (2 Peter iii. 
10-13). — The Editor. 

THE DAY OF DEATH PRACTICALLY THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 

The day of judgment is remote, thy day of judgment is at 
hand, and as thou goest out in particular, so thou shalt be found 
in the general. Thy passing bell and the archangel's trumpet 
have both one sound to thee. In the same condition that thy 
soul leaves thy body, shall thy body be found of thy soul. 
Thou canst not pass from thy death -bed a sinner and appear at 
the great assizes a saint. Both in thy private sessions and the 
universal assizes, thou shalt be sure of the same Judge, the same 
jury, the same witnesses, the same verdict. How certain thou 
art to die, thou knowest ; how soon to die, thou knowest not. 
Measure not thy life with the longest ; that were to piece it out 
with flattery. Thou canst name no living man, not the sickest, 
which thou art sure shall die before thee. Daily we follow the 
dead to their graves, and in those graves we bury the remem- 
brance of our own death with them. Here drops an old man, 
and there a child ; here an aged matron, and there a young vir- 
gin ; with mourning eyes we attend them to their funerals, yet 
before we lay the rosemary out of our hands, the thought of 
death hath vanished from our hearts. When a hog lies bound 
under the knife to be killed, he makes a hideous cry above any 
other creature : hereupon the other swine come running in, and 
they grunt, and whine, and keep a fearful noise ; but as soon as 
the dying beast hath ceased, they also are silent, and return to 
the filthy mire as carelessly as if no harm had been done. 



ADAMS— BARNES. 453 

When we lose a neighbor, a friend, a brother, we weep, and 
howl, and lament, as if, with Rachel, we could never be com- 
forted ; but the body once interred and the funeral ceremonies 
ended, if we do not stay to inquire for some legacies, we run 
back with all possible haste to our former sins and turpitudes, 
as if there had been no such matter. Alas ! that the farthest end 
of all our thoughts should be the thought of our ends. Death 
is but our apprehension, like the taking of a malefactor ; but it 
sends us to the session, and that either to forgiveness or execu- 
tion. O, then, let us repent in life, that we may find comfort in 
death, and be acquitted at the day of judgment by Jesus Christ 
— Melchior Adams, of the Seventeenth Century. 

PREPARATION FOR THE JUDGMENT. 

We should make preparation, because we go there on a very 
solemn errand. We go there not as idle spectators ; not to be- 
hold the glory of the Divine dwelling and throne ; not as we 
often travel to other lands to see the work of nature, or the 
monuments of art ; but we go on the final trial, and with refer- 
ence to the irreversible doom of the soul. A man who is soon 
to be put on trial for his life feels that much must be done with 
reference to that important day in his existence, and makes the 
preparation accordingly. Everything about the kind of testi- 
mony on which he can rely; everything in the law, in the char- 
acter of the judge and of the jury, becomes to him a matter of 
moment, and he looks it all over with most anxious solicitude. 
He who should have the prospect of such a trial before him, and 
who should evince the same unconcern on the points which the 
most of men do in reference to their trial before God, would be 
regarded as a fool or a madman. Should we go into his cell 
and find him engaged in blowing up bubbles, or in some other 
trifling employment, manifesting the utmost indifference to all 
that we could say of the character of the judge or jury, or to the 
importance of being prepared for the arraignment, we should 
regard him as bereft of the characteristics of a rational being. 
On the issue of that interview with God depends everything that 
is dear to us hereafter. There will not be a moment in all that 



454 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

boundless eternity before us which will not be affected by the 

results of that day's investigation. To us it will be the most 

solemn moment of our existence — a period to be remembered 

in all the days of our future being — as it should be anticipated 

with anxious solicitude in all the days that precede it. 

— Albert Barnes. 
THE END OF THE WORLD. 

Even the ancient Hebrews believed that as the world had a 
beginning, it would also have an end ; and so their prophets 
speak of the growing old of the heavens and the earth. They 
teach that hereafter the whole material creation will become 
unfit for its purposes and useless to its inhabitants, and that God 
ivill then lay by the aged heavens, like an old, worn-out gar- 
ment, and create a new heaven and a new earth, vide Ps. cii. 
10-12, where this is described, in opposition to the eternity and 
unchangeableness of God. Heb. i. 10-12. Our seeing the con- 
stant fluctuations and changes of all things, the wasting and 
falling away of the hardest rocks, and other observations of a 
similar nature, may lead to the same thought, and give it 
confirmation. Hence we find in the Old Testament such ex- 
pressions as the following : Until the heaveiis are no more, until 
the sun and the moon are no more — e. g., Job xiv. 12 ; Isa. xiii. ; 
Ezek. xxii., etc. . . . 

From these mora general ideas and expectations respecting 
great changes hereafter to take place in the universe, there was 
developed among the Jews and other nations the more definite 
idea of the future destruction of the world, and especially of our 
earth. Everything, it was supposed, would be hereafter shat- 
tered and destroyed, but not annihilated ; since from the ruins 
of the ancient structure there would come forth again a renewed 
and beautified creation. 

Now Christ and the apostles taught the doctrine of the end 
of the world very distinctly and plainly, and sanctioned what 
was previously known on this subject by their own authority. 
Vide Matt. v. 18 ; Luke xxi. 33 ; 2 Peter iii., etc. 

But among the Jews and some others the doctrine prevailed 
that this change would be effected by a general conflagration. 



KNAPP—DICK. 



455 



This belief in such a conflagration did not at first rest upon any 
arguments drawn from a profound knowledge of natural philos- 
ophy; such, for example, as the supposition of a fire burning in 
the centre of the earth, or the approximation of a comet, as 
many modern writers have thought ; but they were first led to 
this belief, and afterwards confirmed in it, by thought like the 
following : Water and fire are the two most powerful and effi- 
cient elements, by which the most violent changes are produced 
in the earth, and by which desolations and renovations are ef- 
fected. Now we find traditions among all nations respecting 
great floods of water, and the desolations occasioned by them in 
the earliest times. According to Moses, the water originally 
covered the whole earth, and the dry land issued from thence, 
and then followed Noah's flood. It was now the expectation 
that hereafter the other still more fearful element, the fire y which 
even now often causes such terrible desolations, would effect a 
still more amazing and universal revolution than that effected by 
the water, and that by this means the earth would be renewed 
and beautified. 

It was by such analogies as these that this traditionary belief 
was confirmed and illustrated among the heathen nations where 
it prevailed. It was afterward adopted by many philosophers 
into their systems, and advocated by them on grounds of natu- 
ral philosophy. — Prof. Knapp, D. D. 

THE HEAVENS PASSING AWAY. 

When, in reference to the dissolution of our globe and its 
appendages, it is said that " the heavens shall pass away with a 
mighty noise," the aerial heaven, or the surrounding atmosphere, 
is to be understood. How this appendage to our world may be 
dissolved, or pass away with a miglity noise, it is not difficult to 
conceive, now that we have become acquainted with the nature 
and energies of its constituent parts. One essential part of the 
atmosphere contains the principle of flame ; and if this principle 
were not counteracted by its connection with another ingredient, 
or were it let loose to exert its energies without control, instantly 
one immense flame would envelop the terraqueous globe, which 



456 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

would set on fire the foundations of the mountains, wrap the 
ocean in a blaze, and dissolve not only coals, wood and other 
combustibles, but the hardest substances in nature. It is more 
than probable that when the last catastrophe of our globe ar- 
rives, the oxygen and nitrogen, or the two constituent principles 
of the atmosphere, will be separated by the interposition of Al- 
mighty Power. And the moment this separation takes place, it 
is easy to conceive that a tremendous concussion will ensue, and 
the most dreadful explosions will resound throughout the whole 
of the expanse which surrounds the globe, which will stun the 
assembled world and shake the earth to its foundations. For 
if, in chemical experiments, conducted on a small scale, the 
separation of two gases, or their coming in contact with the 
principle of flame, is frequently accompanied with a loud and 
destructive explosion, it is impossible to form an adequate idea 
of the loud and tremendous explosions which would ensue were 
the whole atmosphere at once dissolved, and its elementary prin- 
ciples separated from each other and left to exert their native 
energies. A sound as if creation had burst asunder, and accom- 
panied the next moment with a universal blaze extending over 
sea and land, would present a scene of sublimity and terror 
which would more than realize all the striking descriptions 
given in Scripture of this solemn scene. — Dr. Thomas Dick. 

THE DISSOLUTION OF ALL THINGS. 

In the burning of the universe we find a representation of the 
vanity of the present world. What is this world which fasci- 
nates our eyes ? It is a funeral pile that already begins to burn, 
and will soon be entirely consumed ; it is a world which must 
end, and all that must end is far inferior to an immortal soul. 
The thought of death is already a powerful motive to us to 
place our affections on another world; for what is death? it is 
to every individual what, one day, the final ruin will be to the 
generality of mankind ; it is the destruction of the heavens, 
which pass away with a great noise ; it is the dissolution of the 
elements ; it is the entire conflagration of the world, and of the 
works which are therein. Yet vanity hath invented refuges 



SAURIN— POTTS. 



457 



against this storm. The hope of an imaginary immortality hath 
been able to support some men against the fear of real death. 
The idea of existing, in the minds of those who exist after them, 
hath, in some sort, comforted them under the miserable thought 
of being no more. Hence pompous buildings and stately edi- 
fices ; hence rich monuments and superb mausoleums ; hence 
proud inscriptions and vainglorious titles, inscribed on marble 
and brass : behold the dissolution of all those bonds. 

The destruction of the world deprives us of our imaginary 
being, as death deprives us of our real existence. You will not 
only be shortly stretched in your tombs, and cease to use the 
houses, and fields, and palaces which you inhabit ; but these 
houses, these palaces, these fields will be consumed, and the 
memory of all that is fastened to the world will vanish with the 
world. Since, then, this is the condition of all sensible things ; 
since all these sensible things must perish ; immortal man, 
infinite spirit, eternal soul, fasten not thyself to vanity and 
instability. Seek for a good more suitable to thy nature and 
duration. — James Saurin. 

END OF TIME. 

In the present dispensation we are the subjects of Time. With 
gigantic footsteps he bears us to our future. There is no escape 
from his course. Sometimes in the midst of extensive enter- 
prises and important engagements he summons us, and we must 
obey. Prepared, or unprepared, we are compelled to do him 
service — the only service we can render him — yield up our life, 
The poet had this thought in mind : 

" Remorseless Time ! 
Fierce spirit of the glass and scythe — what power 
Can stay him in his silent course, or melt 
His iron heart to pity ! 
On, still on he presses, and forever." 

Few are the human hearts so hardened but that at some 
period or other they are melted into pity. But were the whole 
universe in tears over the rapid sweep of Time, his silent course 
would not be stayed, nor his iron heart be moved. On, still on, 



458 THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

he would press, and — -forever? No, not forever. The period 
comes on apace when his own death-knell shall ring. He de- 
feats himself by his reckless flight. "And the angel which I 
saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand 
to heaven, and sware by him that liveth forever and ever . . . 
that there should be lime no longer" (Rev. x. 5, 6). Swallowed 
up in eternity, his " iron heart" shall yet be melted to pity; nay, 
shall feel the sting of death. The iron barriers of the tombs 
which he has built shall be broken asunder, and the numberless 
risen dead shall gather the scattered fragments to build an 
eternal sepulchre to him who has laid so many in their last re- 
pose, but who shall then be wrapped in the unending sleep of 
eternity. His funeral dirge shall be chanted by the saints, when 
" God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall 
be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there 
be any more pain, for the former things are passed away." 

— The Editor. 
DEATH OF DEATH. 

Death is an enemy to man, made such by sin. He is a pow- 
erful enemy. He has absolute and universal dominion over the 
bodies of men. And he is to have the longest reign of all 
human foes. " The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." 
Satan is an enemy to man, but Christ came to destroy his works. 
He has no power to injure the faithful and obedient. And in 
course of time he is to be chained up and confined in his own 
place. Sin, in all forms, is an enemy to man ; but in the prom- 
ised and promising universal spread of Christianity, sin shall no 
longer reign, but shall be dethroned by grace. " Where sin 
abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin hath 
reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through right- 
eousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord." So, dis- 
ease is an enemy to man. Destruction and misery are in his 
ways. But in the fires of the great conflagration the seeds 
of every disease shall be burned up. The inhabitants of the 
blessed country never say, " I am sick." But while other foes 
are falling in the great march of events, paradoxical as it may 
seem, Death still lives. He who has no life, but is all death, has 



y h. potts. 45 9 

the longest life of all. Let him live and accomplish his purpose 
with humanity; he shall yet die; and the death of Death will 
be, to the children of God, eternal life. — The Editor. 

THE SECOND DEATH. 

The phrase " second death " is peculiar to the Apocalypse. 
In Rev. ii. II, it is said, " He that overcometh shall not be hurt 
of the second death." It is a fair inference from this passage 
that the second death is not annihilation; for, as Bishop Pearson 
observes, "They who die that death shall be hurt by it; whereas 
if it were annihilation, and so a conclusion of their torments, it 
would be no way hurtful, but highly beneficial to them. But the 
living torments are the second death." 

In Rev. xx. 6, it is declared, " Blessed and holy is he that hath 
part in the first resurrection ; on such the second death hath no 
power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ." The 
import of this passage is substantially the same as that of the 
one above quoted. The two might be paraphrased as follows : 
He that overcometh shall have part in the first resurrection, and 
shall not be hurt of the second death, for on such the second 
death hath no power. What a comforting thought it is that by 
the grace of God we may overcome the world, the flesh, and the 
devil, be accounted blessed and holy, rise from the grave with 
special honor, and escape the pangs of the death which never 
dies. 

" There is a death whose pang 
Outlasts the fleeting breath ; 
O what eternal horrors hang 
Around the second death ! " 

What matter about the first death, which sooner or later must 
pass over us, if we escape the second death ? 

The third use of this term in the Apocalyptic vision is in 
chapter xx. 14: "And death and hell were cast into the lake of 
fire. This is the second death." It thus appears that the sec- 
ond death is to be the destruction of the ancient form of death, 
so long the terror of men, and swallowing up with it, Hades, is 
to prove, as Trench puts, it, "the death in life of the lost, as 



4 6o THE GENERAL JUDGMENT. 

contrasted with the life in death of the saved." This is the 
"everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and the 
glory of his power." Pollok describes it in his picture of the 
final judgment scene. Amid the profound stillness of universal 
life and space the Judge pronounces the sentence. The seven 
last thunders utter their voices. The souls of the reprobate are 
driven beyond the impassable gulf separating between the good 
and the bad. Pausing for a moment upon the verge of Erebus, 
the poet sees them stand ; then 

" God, in the grasp 
Of his almighty strength, took them upraised, 
And threw them down into the yawning pit 
Of bottomless perdition, ruined, damned, 
Fast bound in chains of darkness evermore ; 
And Second Death, and the Undying Worm, 
Opening their horrid jaws with hideous yell, 
Falling, received their everlasting prey." 

— The Editor. 



As there is a second and higher life, so there is also a second 
and deeper death. And as after that life there is no more death, 
so after that death there is no more life. — Dean Alford. 



There is a deathless life, and a resurrectionless death. 

— Dr. Whedon. 




A doctrine unquestionably taught in the Bible, and grounded in the 

very constitution of humanity ; a principle recognized as an 

essential feature of every earthly government ; and 

yet a subject of violent denunciation and 

prolonged controversy. [461] 



" If any man worship the beast and his image, and re- 
ceive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same 
shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is 
poured out without mixture into the cup of his indigna- 
tion ; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone 
in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of 
the Lamb : and the smoke of their torment aseendeth up 
forever and ever." Rev. xiv. 9-11. 

A dungeon horrible on all sides round, 

As one great furnace flamed ; yet from those flames 

No light; but rather darkness visible 

Served only to discover sights of woe. 

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 

And rest can never dwell ; hope never comes, 

That comes to all ; but torture without end. 

— Miltonc 



(462) 




PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

A FUTURE OF DARKNESS. 

HE dark side of eternity affects us more sensibly than the 
bright side does. Intensity of suffering is greater than 
intensity of happiness. Take remorse of conscience 
and peace of conscience as instances. We are certainly 
more affected by remorse than we are by peace. So 
also painful sensations of the body exceed in degree those that 
are pleasurable. Let a man be slowly cut to pieces until life 
departs, or be burned to death, and the intensity of the suffering 
will far exceed the intensity of any kind of bodily pleasure. So 
when sinful beings look steadily into the future, they are more 
alarmed by the fact of eternal misery than they are cheered by 
the fact of eternal blessedness. It requires an effort for a man 
to hope for the best; but fear lays hold of the soul whether 
one wants it or not. 

That the wicked when they enter eternity will see themselves 
to be wholly evil is a startling thought. A man living and dying 
full of conceit : the moment after death gazing upon a depravity 
that has no line of goodness running through it ! There is 
something frightful in the conception that the unnumbered hosts 
of the lost shall be compelled to look around their character 
hour after hour, conscience uttering only one ceaseless con- 
demnation. To be stripped of all that was once thought fair ; 
to be cut off from all the influences which once threw a 
radiance around our souls ; to be left alone with ourselves in 
the " outer darkness" of eternity — to be thus situated is 
death. 

— Rev. John Reid. 

(463) 



464 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED, 

Such place eternal justice had prepared 

For those rebellious ; here their prison ordained 

In utter darkness, and their portion set 

As far removed from God and light of heaven, 

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole. — Milton. 

THE DOCTRINE OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT CONSPICUOUS IN THE 
TEACHINGS OF CHRIST. 

Listen alone to the voice of Christ. He is the centre and 
sum of the New Testament dispensation — the embodiment of 
all we can know or think of love divine. Whatever suspicion 
of insensibility and hard-heartedness might attach to Paul the 
logician, or to Peter the fisherman, is inadmissible here. 

Whatever the world knows of vicarious love this man Jesus 
taught it. He locked arms with the great problem of human 
redemption, and walked with it down under the olives and up 
the hill of woe. He put himself beneath the burden of man's 
sorrow as no other ever did ; he loved mankind as mothers love 
babes ; he wept over cities as men weep over graves. 

Whatever words he speaks to us, therefore, we shall be cer- 
tain that they are not the utterances of a heart that could gloat 
over cruelties, or could try to get power over men by appealing 
to their fears through horrible pictures of fictitious woe. The 
lips that speak to us now are the same that will pray for mur- 
derers by and by. c These things burst upon us from the ten- 
derest heart that ever beat on earth. And we may judge some- 
thing of the emphasis to be attached to them from the fact that 
by virtue of their awful truthfulness they force themselves out 
of such a heart as this. 

Notice that these appeals to the fears of men appear in the 
early morning of Christ's public ministry. In his sermon on 
the mount he gives the key-note of that sublime gospel anthem 
which is to roll through all the ages of the world, and echo for- 
ever among the hills of God. It is the anthem of love and sal- 
vation ; its glory is the cross of incarnate and vicarious Deity ; 
its hope eternal felicity ; its theme is redemption ; its inspiration, 
divine benevolence. 

And yet he cannot sound the key of this sublime symphony 



y. H. BA YLESS, D. D. 465 

without mingling with the very first notes of it the wailings oi 
lost spirits. Threatened damnation joins hands with the beati- 
tudes in Christ's first appeal to mankind. Scarcely have we 
heard those sweet tones, " Blessed are the pure in heart," before 
there breaks on our ears the startling cry of" hell-fire." " Life" 
and " destruction " come in the same breath; the sermon that 
begins with the tender words, " Blessed are the poor in spirit," 
ends with a startling picture of a falling house around which 
destruction howls in rain, flood, and wind. 

Then for months the Preacher goes about among the poor ; 
sees men among their sins and graves ; heals the sick, and even 
raises the dead. So great and good is he that woe sets toward 
him " in a strong, perpetual tide;" every house in which he 
stops becomes a hospital; every field an aceldama; judging 
from what came close around him one might suppose the whole 
world one vast lazar-house. Even he is forced to tears, and 
with dewy eyes, he pities while he heals. 

But how about this dread doctrine which he announces in 
his first sermon ? Does familiarity with the weakness and woes 
of men modify his views or his expression of them ? Not at all, 
for through his tears and tender words and healings there gleam 
out every now and then these same dread lightnings of coming 
doom. Mourning as he does over present woes, he still says, 
" Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee." 

And after his own agony is past, and he stands under the 
opening heavens where waiting angels throng the gates to hail 
his coming, he utters again the same dread cry, " He that be- 
lieveth not shall be damned," and commands his disciples to go 
and teach this to all nations. 

It must be true. Terrible as it is to think of anguish eternal ; 
absolute hopelessness — darkness unpenetrated by a single ray — - 
it must be true, or our tender Lord would not have said it. In 
his sermons, parables and general utterances, he spoke of hell 
2S he did of serpents, death, and sin, not because fair to look 
tipon, but because awful as it is, it is a fact in the universe of 
God. It almost makes us shudder even to speak of the un- 
speakably horrible figures which he used in describing the future 
30 



466 



PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 



condition of the wicked: "everlasting fire; " "tormented in this 
flame;" "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth;" "where 
their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched; " so dreadful 
are words like these that even the sternest pulpits now seldom 
hear them spoken. Yet here they are, and every one of them 
from the same lips that spoke the beatitudes, and comforted the 
sisters at Bethany. There is no escape. We may fret ourselves 
against the heavy chain of this inexorable truth, but it holds us 
fast. We can get rid of the awful menace of eternal punishment 
only by sealing the lips of the Son of God. Let Jesus speak, 
and he will threaten a doom as dreadful as human language can 
express. Let him preach but one sermon, and you shall hear 
surging through it the roar of a lake of fire. Jesus Christ settles 
the fact of post-mortem punishment. — % H. Bayless, D.D. 

PUNISHMENT ACCORDING TO DESERVINGS. 

The Scriptures declare that God " will render to every man 
according to his deeds." " That every idle word that men shall 
speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judg- 
ment." " For we must all appear before the judgment seat of 
Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, 
according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." 
" For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." We 
are to interpret theset texts as announcing an unvarying law of 
retribution, by which every man must inevitably reap the con- 
sequences of his conduct. In proportion as his conduct is good 
he will be happy, and in proportion as it is bad he will b>e un- 
happy. Every act and thought of his life which has a moral 
quality will register itself in his character in ineffaceable impres- 
sions ; so that the character he has at death will be the resultant 
of the various acts of his life. " That which he does to-day and 
to-morrow, each thought, each feeling, each action, each event, 
every passing hour, every breathing moment, is contributing to 
form that character by which he is to be judged." It is that 
character that shall "appear before the judgment seat of Christ " 
and determine the degree of happiness or misery of the immor- 
tal soul who has made it — the degree of happiness, if the soul is 
saved ; the degree of misery, if he is lost. 



ZIMMERMAN— CAL VIN—CHEE VER. 467 

For as there are innumerable grades of character among the 
believing and unbelieving here, so there will be innumerable 
degrees of joy or woe among the saved and the lost hereafter. 
All unbelieving and therefore unsaved men are not equally bad. 
Some of this class lead more correct lives than others, and are 
for the most part moral in their conduct toward their fellow- 
men; while others seem to "give themselves over unto" every 
iniquity, " to work all uncleanness with greediness," at the same 
time attempting to cloak their wickedness with a pretense of 
piety. "These," the Saviour declares, "shall receive the greater 
damnation; " which, with such Scripture phrases as " the lowest 
hell," "beaten with many stripes," and "beaten with few stripes," 
indicates that the miseries of the lost shall be graded according 
to the degrees of their wickedness. Thus, and thus alone, will 
God " render unto every man " among the damned " according 
to his deeds." — C. H. Zimmerman, A.M. 



The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul. 

— John Calvin. 

HOW THE WICKED ARE ENSNARED. 

As fishes are taken in an evil net — a net of basket-work, like 
%iat set in rivers, with wide, easy openings toward the tide, like 
tunnels, through which the fishes glide without obstruction or 
suspicion, but suddenly find themselves imprisoned and no pos- 
sibility of escape, the nose of the tunnel being of sharp stakes, 
that opened easily to let them in, but point inward and shut and 
impale them on trying to get out — so are men taken in an evil 
time by the reaction of their own natures. " The wicked shall 
be taken in his own iniquities and holden with the cords of his 
own sins." They were not cords, they were not cables when he 
began to play with them and to wind them around his sensi- 
bilities and his soul ; but soft, silky, almost invisible threads, as 
light and soft as gossamer. They were a tangle of bright, shin- 
ing nets, as easily pierced and broken at first with a single 
arrow from God's truth as a bee upon the wing would break 
through a cobweb on a rosebush. But out of such material, 



4&S PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

only multiply it, weave it, wind it, braid it long enough, many 
times enough, and you have a cable and a net that no giant 
could break asunder. Even so are men taken captive by Satan 
at his will, and what were threads at first, almost invisible as 
air and light as the footfalls of the dew upon the flowers, become 
stronger than chain cables. — George B. Cheever, D. D. 

THE NATURE AND DURATION OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 

(Abbreviated from a paper read before tbe Theological Union, at Garrett Biblical Institute, Evanston, 
Illinois. Published in this volume by courtesy of the author. — Editor.") 

The methods of thought which are correct in regard to 
heaven, are correct for hell. If we never think of understanding 
the figures of the one literally, we should not of the other. If 
heaven is not simply a vast building, or city, or garden, then 
hell is not literal fire or living worm. If heaven is made by 
character, hell is made by character. 

I. It is an Estate of Sinners. Still sinful, therefore still under 
the ban with all sin. Newton, in his " Principia," established the 
fact that the laws of the earth's physics hold good on any globe. 
God in his book of Principles teaches a like persistence of moral 
qualities. A man who has murdered in Detroit is a murderer 
in Canada, or if drowned in crossing over. If there is not that 
corruption of the original nature whereby the man is very far 
gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined 
to evil continually, he cannot be admitted into hell. The com- 
pany have the desires, appetences and tendencies of sinners. 
There must be the loss of heaven and the heavenly character, 
istics. There must be unrest, companionships on principles of 
hate and selfishness, sin, malignity, bitterness, undermining cum 
ning, prison life of suppression, remorse, agony, banishment 
with the devil and his angels. Concede a heaven, and we con- 
cede a not-heaven, and the whole class of poena damni. 

Sin in its essential nature is the creature's attempt to sever, and 
his actual severance from his Creator. He must be what he 
craves to be in and through himself. This is impossible. Our 
soul life is hid with Christ in God, and there can be no blessed< 
ness apart from loving him and being loved by him. That love 



N. H. AXTELL, D. D. 



469 



must be voluntary. The sinner will not find the life of his soul 
in God. Balked in his selfish attempts to find what he was 
made to enjoy, his selfish pride is the more daring. It does not 
follow that the soul is therefore free, because it has cast off God. 
Being made on a royal plan for righteousness through this union 
with God, it is overwhelmed without the union. He is too 
weak for the carnal self. " He that committed sin is the servant 
of sin." 

We are not sinners who knew no better. We are debtors as 
well as transgressors. " We might have been," " we ought to 
have been " — kings. We have not been administering the king- 
dom. We are conscious of being wrong in conduct and in 
condition. We are erring, amd hence evil consequences : we 
are guilty, therefore subject to punishment. 

2. Sin is by natural laws subject to bad consequences, and is 
under the ban according to its character. 

God stands by his laws. We reap wrath when we sow to the 
flesh. Terrible consequences follow a small derangement. A 
screw loose lets a wheel drop into another wheel, then what a 
succession ! There is no proportion between cause and curse. 
It would be very foolish to talk of compensations and propor- 
tions in such case. The soul's forces go forward in a straight 
line, perverted though they be, and would go right on forever. 
The downward course of sin furnishes the most vivid climaxes 
of the Bible. (These climacteric illustrations of sin's progress 
were quoted, and the law of sin's multiplication and complete 
subjugation shown. The malignity of sin shown by its history.) 

3. The nature of hell is seen in perversion of man's magnifi- 
cent powers. 

The higher the power the greater the perversion. The ex- 
quisiteness of the joy in the use arises from the complications 
and nice adaptation which increase the pain and possibility of 
perversion. 

Not as a factory may the soul be ground down into material 
dust and ashes, but infinite as its duration and varied as ite 
functions may be its ruin when colliding with itself, its sur- 
roundings and with God. 



47<D PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

Memory. An actor in New York commits the morning Her- 
ald at a single reading. We may think of memory as receiving, 
retaining and recalling. Everything received is retained for the 
future. What was covered is strangely reproduced. The sin- 
ner's acts and passions are all retained to be recalled. Still more 
sad the fact as to what is received : that to which we give at- 
tention and sympathy. It takes up its load according to the 
character. A bad man retains the lascivious song, but has no 
sympathetic basis for the sermon. A sieve to the good, a sponge 
to the foul, he gathers like a scavenger, is loaded like a pack- 
horse with foul carcasses for Gehenna. 

Imagination is a creating faculty that exalts man into kinship 
with his Maker. She works for everybody. She shows the 
engineer the New York Central Park, where there is only 
robber-hiding rocks and sickness-reeking swamps ; sees the hu- 
man face beneath a million chips of marble ; invents engines, 
and writes " Hamlet;" she pictures the home of sorrow and 
helps charity; is the major part of faith, hope and the persever- 
ance of saints ; builds heaven. But she makes a bad man's hell. 
His imagination revels in the sinful, whets sensual passions by 
ideal pictures, by delusive representations, leads furiously after 
unreal pleasures at the cost of real sin. The cup looks roseate 
atop, and is named sociability : when its agitation is tremens 
and its nature death. The bad will humors the falsity. Ex- 
travagancies are indistinguishable from realities, and not less 
powerful because untrue. The effect is seen in delirium and 
melancholia. Visit an insane hospital, and gain a conception 
of a worldful of disordered imaginations. 

Conscience, by its very truthfulness, fills a bad soul with ter- 
rors. A candle of the Lord, it lights up the darkest depth. 
" Conscience makes cowards of us all," because of our ill-desert. 

" We are verily guilty concerning our brother in that we saw 
the anguish of his soul when he besought us and we would not 
hear, therefore is this distress come upon us." " It is John the 
Baptist, he is risen from the dead," cried Herod. " The mur- 
dered Huguenots come to me," was the conscience-cry of 
Charles IX. " I must go into the Senate," said Tiberius, " and 



N. H. AXTELL, D. D. 



471 



tell them that what I suffer every day is worse than death." 
" God has let my conscience loose upon me," was the terrible 
cry of a youth that had destroyed his father's religion. 

Man's Free Will. We are conscious of causative energy. We 
cannot see causation without attributing it to mind. We are 
casual minds in the image of God, sharing his rationality and 
freedom. Were we things only, " brambles rude," or dumb 
driven cattle, we should come to very different conclusions. 
Were we necessitated beings, all sources of greatness were cut 
off, and we should no more have virtue, character, or heaven, 
than bramble or brute. Man has a sphere in which he is free 
as God is in his greater sphere. This will uses the intellect for 
light, the sensibilities for motives. With a degraded court the 
king is corrupted. The Louis XIV. goes down in Madame 
Maintenon's lap, and the Samson is shorn of his strength by 
Delilah. In "the battle of the I's," as given in the seventh chap- 
ter of Romans, the carnal mind may reject Christ, and reject 
him forever. The Love Divine that gave the law to secure 
virtue, stated the penalty of disobedience plainly, that came 
as Saviour and as Holy Spirit, may be met by the creature's 
hate. The will versus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in all offers 
and offices may be triumphant. Moreover, by the terrible ob- 
duracy of its very freedom superinduce a guilty thraldom, so as 
no longer to will any good. 

Consciousness, in its still more terrible perversion, brings the 
characteristics kindred to demoniacal possessions. 

Cases of double consciousness arise from sins of personal im- 
purity, or delirium tremens, frequently in cesspools of heathen- 
ism, where the unfortunate beings are shattered and controlled 
as by alien spirits that had leaped into the seat of personality. 

But man in his present gracious state has a still higher class 
of powers, which are the very life of the soul. Man has a capa- 
city for spirit-union with God. All his springs are in God, and 
the life he now lives in the flesh he lives by the Son of God, 
who loved him and gave himself for him. There is a spirit 
in man, a basis upon which the Almighty giveth him under- 
standing. We are gloriously akin to God in this, but sin 



472 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

destroys this relationship, as we can plainly see about us. From 
neglect, hardness, reprobacy, men are found " past feeling." 

Faith Power, of which the soul makes first its affiance with 
God and next gains its reliance, the sinner rejects till all God- 
ward attachments of the soul are gone. Sermons now preached 
fall as the sermons of students practising in the woods fall on 
rocks and trees. " I was as a brute before thee." 

The Power of Loving is perverted by the service in the oppo- 
site passion. Hate absorbs all. Where all hate, all is hell. 

In what has been said, two processes may be seen. A growth 
into sin : a growth out of spiritual powers and out of spiritual 
possibilities. Death gives a release to saint and sinner. Each 
has allies and foes without and within. You can catalogue the 
helping and the retarding forces of each. When release comes 
by removing one set of counter forces, each shall have his ful- 
ness of his own devising. The saint shall bound upward amid 
infinite felicities, and be satisfied. The sinner shall find license 
" given over to work all uncleanness with greediness " — can 
finish into fiend. 

4. The future holds more than consequences of sin : it has 
judicial punishment. A true view of sin discloses the truth : 
"'Against Thee — Thee only — have I sinned." Here, as elsewhere, 
God must care for his system, and pervade all its general laws, 
as though it were a vast living thing, pulsating harmoniously at 
the touch of his will. All natural laws thus held as his work- 
ings, he can have from the first arranged, such consequences as 
should be, in whole or in part, the proper punishers for his free 
conspirators. So the Scriptures hold. Self-inflicted consequences 
may yet be judicially weighed and primitively sent. 

II. Duration. 

1. The nature of sin indicates the eternity of its punishment. 
There is a necessary and eternal difference between right, the 
blessedness-procurer, and wrong, that puts under the ban. This 
relation can never be abolished. A sin can no more cease to 
be sin, and a bringer of uninterrupted evil, than God can cease 
to be holy. 

There is nothing in suffering to restore character. Sin is 



N. H. AX TELL, D. D. 473 

pestilential in its nature, only widening and spreading ; suffering 
a mere negative consequence. That one suffers long with dis- 
ease is not regarded as proof that he nears health. If it be 
heart disease, we do not therefore say his lungs must be very 
strong. Sin is not certain limited results of bad environment of 
circumstances, that are cast out like emptying a horse-trough, 
but the free will is itself a creator, sending forth like an exhaust- 
less fountain. The way to heaven is not through hell. 

2. The condition of the sinner necessitates the eternity of his 
punishment. He has made a definite character, secured his 
regnant choice, gained his license, outlined his faculties for 
good, and in this has a 'given direction and momentum. His 
forces are right-linear in hell. There is no gravity back to good 
to make his course pendulum-like, or bring it back like a comet 
from its wandering. It is not like a wooden ball on a rubber 
string, flying back to the hand. The string is cut. Character 
makes the gulf impassable. 

3. The character of God gives no hope. He only knows the 
height from which sin hurls his child. He is bereaved indeed. 
He sees sin as that thing so dreadful that the infinite Son alone 
could atone for it: the Holy Spirit alone sanctify the soul 
touched by it : the infinite Father alone could forgive it. He 
knows that the Father gave his all — his only Son : the Son gave 
all — his life : the Spirit gave all — poured out himself: that God- 
head has exhausted himself in the Great Salvation, and there 
remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, and no escape to neglecters. 
He does not want the soul anywhere but in hell, as a sinner. 
So in the sentences of Jesus Christ he settles the matter without 
a tremor of a doubt, and these shall go away into everlasting 
punishment, but the righteous into life eternal. With like calm 
and decisive utterance he says of the wicked, they are " cast into 
outer darkness, burn with unquenchable fire — drink of the wine 
of the wrath of God — the wrath of God abideth upon them." 

He cannot proclaim a pardon, for it is God-antagonism that 
keeps them out. 

A second probatio?i is simply an impossibility. The sinner 
has a character on hand. What will he do with it? It is himself. 



474 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

To get rid of this is to be annihilated ; to be brought back as at 
childhood, is to be created another being. Then the work is 
not done. Justice is cheated, and the chain binding the sin to 
the sinner is unbroken. Only the great miracle of the cross on 
earth does that. Sin cannot be a mightier saviour than that 
which embodied Godhead. 

The knowledge given of doomed spirits is in point. Christ, 
the pitiful, had no salvation for them. If they might dwell a few 
days in degraded men or swine, it was all mercy could do. 

The last refuge of lies is 

ANNIHILATION. 

The TtpwTov <p£v§oe of this system is in utterly mistaking the 
meaning of the words life and death. Life is used as if it meant 
only existence, but life never means simply existence. It means 
existence plus certain functions. Unceasingness is alike in all 
things that possess it, but we never know what the life of a par- 
ticular thing is until we know its functions. A mountain of 
granite is a grand existence, but has no life. A vegetable has 
life when it meets its end of existence; so a higher life is that 
of an animal. A soul lives when it meets the end of its ex- 
istence, by loving, honoring, obeying God. 

Death, the opposite of life, never means annihilation. 

To be carnally minded is death. 

2. Great indeed does this absurdity become when it requires 
that perish, destroy, consume, and other words of like nature, mean 
always annihilation. The lost sheep and missing coin must be an- 
nihilated. " The righteous perish ; " are they, too, annihilated ? 

3. This would contravene justice. It is an unequalled terror 
to the comparatively good ; a great reward (as suicides, Epicure- 
anism, Hindooism prove) to the bad. 

4. The doctrine is fatalistic as compared with the Scripture, 
which is scientific. It is arbitrary action of God's power. 

This last refuge fails therefore. We have no escape but by 
the cross, from the character of sinners. Rejecting this, there 
is no escape from the prison-house of souls, over the portals of 
which is written, forever. — Rev. N. H. Axtell, D. D. 



J. H. POTTS. 475 

ETERNAL IMPRISONMENT. 

God is a righteous Judge. To him vengeance belongeth. He 
executeth judgment, but not speedily, against the workers of in- 
iquity. Heaven is his throne ; earth is his footstool ; hell is his 
prison-house. We are sure that he has already punished a 
rebellious faction of created intelligences. The angels that kept 
not their first estate found their place no more in heaven, but 
were cast out with the dragon, that old serpent, called the devil. 

" Him the Almighty power 
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion down 
To bottomless perdition ; there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire — 
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms." 

Some think that to repopulate the heavenly world man was 
created. At all events, he was given an existence, limited as to 
time, unlimited as to eternity. Earth was the scene of his pro- 
bation. Eden was his garden home. The divine government 
in relation to him instituted a prohibitory law — in other words, 
put him on trial. The law had respect to both parts of his ex- 
istence, the temporal and eternal. If man acquitted himself 
well, he was to have liberty as a citizen, dominion over the earth 
and freedom in eternity. If not, he was to die — that is, suffer 
the penalty of a violated law. Having an endless existence, he 
was capable of endless death — banishment from God, impris- 
onment for life. Just as in the human law the guilty may be 
punished by imprisonment during the entire period of the earthly 
life, so God may apply the same principle under his government, 
and imprison the guilty soul during the entire period of its ex- 
istence. It may be as necessary in the one case as in the other. 
Certainly the good order of eternity is as important as that of 
time. And man cannot deny to God in his government a prin- 
ciple which is found so necessary in human affairs. If it be 
objected that the cases of guilt are not parallel, that the crime 
is not commensurate with the severity of the sentence, we reply: 
No one can prove this to be the case. We know that sin is 
utterly odious to the holy God. It is high treason against his 



476 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

government He cannot regard it with allowance. It is murder. 
By it the Son of God is crucified afresh. Who shall say this is 
not a crime ? It is a crime of the darkest hue, against which 
the whole Bible rings with denunciations. 

But is God vindictive in meting out the punishment ? Not 
by any means. He is slow to wrath. He loves the sinner,, 
while he hates his sins. Hell was not prepared by him for man 
at all, but for the devil and his angels. Its human inmates are 
self-destroyed. God cannot, in equity, help them. He has no 
pleasure in their death. He not only gave man an opportunity 
to win heaven at first, but he provided for his redemption after 
he had fallen. What more could he have done, as a righteous 
ruler, than he has ? To rescue man from perdition, he could 
have gone no further without destroying free will — in a word, 
without blotting out manhood itself. He follows every sinner 
through life, urges his claim to allegiance, warns, entreats, goes 
with him to life's latest end — to the very precincts of perdition 
itself — and calls out at last, " Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye 
die?" The soul that breaks through such restraints to get to 
hell is a moral suicide, a self-murderer. In the eyes of the law, 
no man has power over life to take it; no man has jurisdiction 
over his own life to destroy it. If the suicide could be reached 
by man's punishment, he would be entitled to the same deserts 
that the murderer receives, for he has destroyed a life. Suppose, 
now, the penalty of murder to be imprisonment for life. The 
duration of such a penalty is justified on the ground that, as the 
murderer's victim was deprived of a bodily life, so the murderer 
should suffer during the existence of his bodily life. And the 
law does not discriminate whether the life be long or short. The 
measure of the confinement is gauged by the extent of the loss 
incurred-as a result of the crime, which is the loss of a life. 

Now, the penalty of taking soul life, whether in self or others 
(and some are doubtless guilty of both), is determined by the 
same principle. The duration of imprisonment must be co-equal 
with the existence of the lost soul, else the measure is not com-, 
mensurate with the loss incurred. As the taking of a natural 
life merits life-long punishment, so the taking of a soul life 



POTTS— BUNYAN— TO WNSEND. 47^ 

requires a corresponding duration of punishment. The sense 
of justice in man sanctions the one, and when in a proper con- 
dition to express itself, it will sanction the other. A pure society 
in the eternal world would no more be reconciled to criminals 
roaming at large, free and unguarded, than the best society on 
earth is to a similar condition of things. There could be no 
everlasting security or happiness for the good with offenders un» 
confined. God knows this, and he therefore proposes to shut 
out and shut up the bad. "For without are dogs, and sorcerers, 
and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whoso- 
ever loveth and maketh a lie." — The Editor. 



When once a man is damned, he may bid adieu to all 

pleasures. — Bunyan. 

NO REPRIEVE. 

Is the reply ventured that true penitence is a universal and an 
absolute basis of restoration, and that if the guilty, at any period 
in the future, however remote, should repent, they will be re- 
stored ? There is not a little assumption, it is manifest, in this 
plea. Retributive justice and the necessary and involved re- 
quirements growing out of the divine administration, as already 
seen, render such a supposition far from certain. The position 
is taken also without the least Scripture warrant. 

The Bible leaves the impenitent in Gehenna, suffering the 
judicial penalty of their sins; it nowhere speaks of their restora- 
tion ; not one word is given to assure us that their punishment 
is of limited duration, or that the final holiness and happiness 
of all men may ever be expected. All such expectations are, 
in fact, groundless ; they are also pernicious. When Romanism 
and Liberalism will extinguish their Purgatorial fires, the one 
will increase its piety and the other its devotion a hundred 
fold. 

To arraign the benignity of the divine administration, unless 
it allows of more than one probation, affords no relief; it is like 
complaining because there is but one youth time for the man 
who has worse than wasted his early years ; one complaint is as 
reasonable as the other. 



478 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

For the sake of the argument, however, we will admit that 
if the guilty will repent in the future, they will be restored. 
The counter question at once presents itself, What if they will 
not repent ? Or what good reason is there for supposing that 
men in the future life, as in this, while in the exercise of their 
responsible agency, will not resolutely persist in the work of 
self-destruction ? " In this world, where stands the cross of 
Christ, men turn away from the offers of mercy which it makes, 
and with strange and mysterious desperation rush on in their 
course of self-inflicted evils, and at length lie down and die in 
darkness and horror; " what are the evidences that they will be 
so situated as not to do the same hereafter ? If they continue 
as they are, can God save them ? Supposing the duration 
of punishment were fixed ; the murderer to be punished a cer- 
tain number of ages, the thief a certain number, the liar and 
slanderer, and all others, a given period, and that the punish- 
ments have been inflicted corresponding with the times specified; 
is restoration then to ensue ? No one dares reply, Yes, uncon- 
ditionally; for if the sinner has continued his rebellion, if he is 
just as much a criminal as when the punishment began, there 
can be no grounds of restoration. His second offence is more 
offensive even than his first, and in civil legislation is adjudged 
worthy of severer and longer continued punishment. The suf- 
fering must, in the nature of things, be coexistent with the 
impenitence. . . . 

The more the subject is examined, the less will be the ground 
for expecting future repentance on the part of the finally im- 
penitent; this being the case, the only foundation on which 
Restorationism can stand is removed. Certainly human nature 
points to continued impenitence. Nothing can be hoped from 
the effects of punishment. Of contrition under suffering every- 
body is shy. . . . And surely that abode in which the most 
hardened criminals the world has known are placed, the abode 
of outcasts and demons, God's great prison-house, " without 
chapel or chaplain," is the last spot in the universe in which 
to reform men. Gehenna and a revival of virtue are utterly and 
eternally incompatible elements. In fine, all reasoning based 



TO WNSEND— BICKERS TE TH—ED WARDS. 479 

upon analogy strikes the death-knell of every hope as to a 
second probation, which shall be better for men than the first. 
There remains no more sacrifice for sin, is the solemn voice 
heard echoing through nature and Providence, as well as in the 
Scriptures. — L. T. Townsend, D. D. 



Passive submission is the law of hell. — Bickersteth. 

NO ANNIHILATION. 

According to the Scriptures, the wicked depart into everlast- 
ing fire. The smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and 
ever. They shall weep, and wail, and gnafh their teeth. They 
have no rest day nor night. The rich man in hell lifted up his 
eyes, being in torments. The wicked shall dwell with everlast- 
ing burnings. When the master of the house shall have risen 
up and shut the door, they shall stand without, crying, Lord, 
Lord, open unto us ; to whom the master shall say, I know you 
not, depart from me. The wicked shall be tormented with fire 
and brimstone in the presence of the angels, and in the presence 
of the Lamb. The beast and false prophet shall be cast into a 
lake of fire, and shall be tormented forever and ever. 

But how can those who are annihilated be said to be cast 
into fire, into a lake of fire and brimstone, and to be tormented 
there ; to have no rest ; to weep, and wail, and gnash their 
teeth; to dwell with everlasting burnings? As well might these 
things be said of them before they were created. How can 
they be said to plead for admission into heaven, and to 
reason on the subject with the Master of the celestial man- 
sions ? The smoke of their torments ascendeth up forever 
and ever, and they have no rest day nor night. But those who 
are annihilated, so far as they have anything, have continual 
rest day and night. 

The different degrees of the punishment of the wicked in 
hell prove that their punishment does not consist in annihi- 
lation. The punishment of the fallen angels does not consist in 
annihilation; and the damned suffer the same kind of punishment 



480 



PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 



with them. In expectation of that full punishment, to which 
they are liable, they asked our Lord whether he were come to 
torment them before their time. — Jonathan Edwards. 

THE WORD "EVERLASTING." 

" Everlasting " is used seventy-one times in the New Testa- 
ment ; fifty of those times it is used to denote endless life and 
salvation ; nowhere does it convey an exclusively temporal idea, 
and the unavoidable inference is, that it means endlessness ; eight 
or ten times it is employed to convey an idea of the duration 
of the punishment of finally impenitent sinners. " Forever " im- 
plies, both in the New and Old Testament, in Greek just as in 
English, the whole duration of the existence of the state or thing 
to which it is applied. The forever of a man is during his 
whole existence ; of a nation, its whole existence ; of the world, 
its whole existence ; and of the future state in eternity, its whole 
existence. And then, " forever and ever," has, especially, the 
exclusive meaning of indefinite, of endless duration. But there 
are some general expressions in the Scriptures which seem 
more certainly still to exclude hope from the doom of the lost. 
The sinner shall " be destroyed, and that without remedy ; " the 
wicked " shall not inherit the kingdom of God ; " the unbeliever 
" shall not see (eternal) life, but the wrath of God abideth on 
him ; " the wicked are " cast into outer darkness ; " he " hath 
never forgiveness ; " " delivered him to the tormentors till he 
should pay all that was due unto him ; " it were for him " better 
that he had never been born ; " the " great gulf" of our text can- 
not be passed; and, above all, and what shows the state of the lost 
to be the end of all probation, even " death and hades " them- 
selves, are " cast into the lake of fire," into the lake where the 
wicked are, and where the devil and his angels are. But, it is 
asked, " is it not promised that all things shall be restored in 
Christ ? " Oh, yes ! the day is coming when all, Jew and Gen- 
tile, all that then live in a state of probation, all that God is 
then dealing with for their salvation, shall be gathered together 
in Christ. But criminals under final sentence of death are not 
included in the census of the people ; the future earth of prophecy 



JEFFERS— TR UMB ULL. a% x 

is the earth that shall be, not including those whose sins have 
put them out of the count forever ; the remnant of Israel is al- 
ways referred to by the prophets as being the whole nation ; and 
it is of the salvation of the remnant that Paul says, "And so all 
Israel shall be saved." Yes, the world shall be restored in Christ ; 
the living, not the dead world. In the next place, are not the 
conditions of the gospel absolute, so that salvation depends 
absolutely upon them ? Most certainly to those who refuse to 
comply with the conditions, there is an endless, a hopeless for- 
feiture of all that is meant by salvation. Still further, is it not 
certainly the fact, as is admitted by one of the latest and ablest 
of English Universalists, that there is not, in any part of the 
Bible, a single word to show any further probation for souls after 
this life ? There is no word of any preaching or prayer, any par- 
don or grace, any rescue or escape, in the eternal world. It is 
weak and presumptuous, therefore, for any one to indulge a 
thought which receives no validity from the only revelation we 
have of eternal realities. 

— W. Jeffers y D.D. 

TAKING THE WORD AS IT STANDS. 

Said a quaint New England preacher, " Beware of Bible com- 
mentators who are unwilling to take God's words just as they 
stand. The first commentator of that sort was the devil in the 
garden of Eden. He proposed only a slight change — just the 
one word ' not ' to be inserted, ' Ye shall not surely die.' The 
amendment was accepted, and the world was lost." The devil 
is repeating that sort of commentary with every generation of 
hearers. He insists that God couldn't have meant just what he 
said; that it must be that "everlasting punishment" is not ever- 
lasting; that the wages of sin is not death. To begin with, the 
devil induced one foolish woman to accept his exegesis ; now 
he has theological professors who are of his opinion on these 
points ; and there are multitudes of men and women who go on 
in the ways of sin because they believe the devil's word, and 
do not believe the word of God. 

— H. Clay Trumbull, D. D. 
3i 



4.82 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

On the deck, or in the rigging, of a burning vessel at sea ; 
when death is absolutely certain, it is to be presumed that it 
does not take a wicked man very long to decide with what 
feelings he will meet his God. — N. Adams, D. D. 



Divines and dying men may talk of hell, 

But in my heart her several torments dwell. — Shakespeare. 

THE MENTAL AGONY. 

On the whole, it is of very little importance whether we say 
there is an external fire, or only an idea of such pain as arises 
from burning ; and should we think both doubtful, it is certain 
God can give the mind a sense of agony and distress which 
should answer and even exceed the terrors of those descriptions; 
and care should certainly be taken so to explain Scripture 
metaphors as that hell may be considered as consisting more 
of mental agony than of bodily tortures. — Dr. Doddridge. 

THE FEARFUL COMPANY. 

If you were to spend a whole life, and never be separated 
from the vile and loathsome a single instant, what a gloom 
would it spread over your mind ! Hell is the place where there 
are many such — where all the inhabitants are such: " Without 
are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and murderers and 
idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie," — whatever is 
abominable. Oh ! tell me not of the fire and the worm, and the 
blackness and darkness of hell : to my terrified conscience, there 
is hell enough in this presentation of it — that it is the common 
sewer of all that is abominable and abandoned and reckless as 
to principle, and depraved as to morals ; the one common eddy, 
where everything that is polluted and wretched and filthy is 
gathered together. — Dr. Beaumont. 

GEHENNA, OR THE LAKE OF FIRE. 

There is " a lake of fire " — at least this language is in the 
Bible, and it means something. Well for us if we give it the 
meaning with which the Holy Spirit has invested it ! To d© 



MERRILL— ADAMS. 483 

this we must not be wise above what is written, nor flinch from 
the results involved, however stern. 

Gehenna is the theme. This is beyond death. Has it any 
connection with the " lake of fire ? " My proposition is, Gehcnna y 
as used by our Lord, represents the same punishment, the same 
state and doom of the wicked, that is symbolized in the "Apoc- 
alypse " by the " lake of fire," and the "second death." 

This does not mean that Gehenna is an emblem of the lake of 
fire. Both are symbols. At least Gehenna is used metaphori- 
cally, the name of a literal valley on earth, passing over to a 
state or place of punishment in the future, of which identical 
punishment the lake of fire is a symbol. Each pictures to the 
mind the same outcome of the life of sin, the ultimate and irre- 
versible perdition of ungodly men. . . . 

Gehenna is not Hades, is not in Hades, is no part of Hades, 
and comes into the scenes of human destiny only as Hctdes goes 
out. Death and Hades deliver up their dead before the judg- 
ment, and after the judgment they ire cast into the "lake of 
fire," which is Gehenna. 

Gehenna means punishment after death. Men are cast into 
it after the body is killed ; and yet it receives them, soul and 
body together. It is therefore after the resurrection. It is the 
Gehenna — fire — the " everlasting fire," " the unquenchable fire," 
and it is the " fire prepared for the devil and his angels." It 
corresponds in every particular to the " lake of fire." Like the 
lake it is after death, after the resurrection, and after the judg- 
ment; and it receives the devil and his angels, as well as the 
ungodly of earth. Then why separate them ? This cannot be 
done. Gehenna and the "lake of fire " point to the same thing. 
That thing is final. It is the " second death." Upon it falls the 
curtain of everlasting night ! No voice echoes back its horrors. 
No light gleams from its lurid burnings. No revolution of 
cycles numbers the measure of its years. Eternity, dark, 
fathomless, hopeless, seals the fate of all adjudged to dwell 
amid the devouring fires. — Bishop S. M. Merrill. 



Hell is truth seen too late. — H G. Adams, 



484 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

HELL. 

Wide was the place, 
And deep as wide, and ruinous as deep. 
Beneath, I saw a lake of burning fire, 
With tempest tossed perpetually ; and still 
The waves of fiery darkness 'gainst the rocks 
Of dark damnation broke, and music made 
Of melancholy sort ; and overhead, 
And all around, wind warred with wind, storm howled 
To storm, and lightning forked lightning crossed, 
And thunder answered thunder, muttering sounds 
Of sullen wrath ; and far as sight could pierce, 
Or down descend in caves of hopeless depth, 
I saw most miserable beings walk, 
Burning continually, yet unconsumed • 
Forever wasting, yet enduring still ; 
Dying perpetually, yet never dead. 
Some wandered lonely in the desert flames. 
And some in fell encounter fiercely met, 
With curses loud, and blasphemies that made 
The cheek of darkness pale ; and as they fought, 
And cursed and gnashed their teeth, and wished to die, 
Their hollow eyes did utter streams of woe. 
And there were groans that ended not, and sighs 
That always sighed, and tears that ever wept, 
And ever fell, but not in Mercy's sight. 
And Sorrow, and Repentance, and Despair 
Among them walked, and to their thirsty lips 
Presented frequent cups of burning gall. 
And as I listened, I heard these beings curse 
Almighty God, and curse the Lamb, and curse 
The earth, the resurrection morn ; and seek, 
And ever vainly seek, for utter death. 
And to their everlasting anguish still, 
The thunders from above responding spoke 
These words, which, through the caverns of perdition 
Forlornly echoing, fell on every ear : 
" Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not ! " — Robert Pollok. 

THE REASONABLENESS OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 

This cannot be a question for Christians to discuss with 
Atheists. For Atheists deny that there is any moral govern- 
ment of the world, so that we have other questions to settle 
with them before we come to this one. As to those who reject 



W. JEFFERS, D. D. 485 

the Scriptures, while still holding to a Providence, they are not 
warranted by what they know of this world to contradict reve- 
lation in what relates to the world to come. They may say 
they will or will not believe, but plainly they do not know, of 
their own knowledge, what is in the world to come; and science 
does not even profess to tell or to teach anything respecting 
that world. Sceptics are entitled only to ask, " Is endless pun- 
ishment right?" They are undoubtedly entitled to ask that 
question. Yet how can we argue even with them ? They all 
eliminate from religion the very idea of right and wrong, of guilt 
and justice, of any judicial acts on the part of God. How can 
we discuss with them whether anything is right, if they ignore 
or deny the reality of all such ideas as moral right and wrong? 
Here at least the common reason of the race cannot understand 
them. Now, does not the very fact that this life is a state of pro- 
bation, a life introductory and preparatory to another after life — 
does not this very idea imply the finality, permanence, endless- 
ness of that state that comes after this ? Does not every one 
feel this to be the logical inference ? 

Again, does not the natural conscience in man, does not 
man's moral nature, show and prove the moral nature of the 
Creator, intimate to us the kind of government we are under, 
and give the unavoidable suggestion that we are and will be 
dealt with as moral and accountable beings ? Again, does not 
the principle of future reward contain in it, at least does it not 
necessarily imply, the principle of punishment ? If there is re- 
ward, there must be punishment also ; for even the final loss of, 
exclusion from, reward, would itself be endless punishment. 
Again, is not justice to the sinner mercy to the public, goodness 
to the universe, implying good to all creation forever and ever? 
And ought not those sceptics who talk and write so loudly a 
boastful doctrine of " self-sacrifice," to confess it right that the 
one shall be sacrificed for the highest good of the rest ? Yes, 
for the achievement or preservation of any highest good at all ? 
Again, and especially, sceptics have sought to make the doctrine 
hateful by representing the future sufferings as the extremest 
torment and most revolting tortures. But what have they to do 



4.86 



PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 



with the degree of the suffering ? They deny any suffering ; so 
that the only question between them and us is, will there be any 
suffering in the future fixed abode ? We know nothing at all 
about the degree of the suffering ; the Bible gets its words in a 
figurative sense from Sodom and the valley of Hinnom; but the 
lowest imaginable degree of endless suffering would support the 
meaning of the very strongest expressions in the Bible. In one 
word, the Judge of all the earth will do right, and if any par- 
ticular degree of punishment is more than is right — why, it will 
not be inflicted. This meets every possible objection from con- 
sideration of what is right. Again, to complete this last answer 
to the sceptics, every different degree of guilt will receive its 
own different degree of punishment. The differences of guilt 
are almost infinite ; so will be the difference of punishment. 
Here is infinite room for every demand of right and reason. 

— W. Jejfers, D. D. 

The doctrine of iuture punishment is scriptural, and can be 
overthrown only by a form of reasoning which destroys all faith 
in the Word of God. The criticism which extorts any other 
sense from the language of Christ and his apostles, can as easily 
maintain polygamy, vindicate slavery, or teach modern spirit- 
ualism. Every man, except the abandoned criminal, or sensual- 
ist, is abstractly a believer in retribution. When some great 
crime stirs the blood and unites men in a common purpose to 
avenge the wrong, their speculative notions of universal tolera- 
tion, and mercy to passive culprits, vanish like gossamer. 

—J. M. Arnold. 
WHY WE BELIEVE THE DOCTRINE. 

1. It is safe doctrine. We run no risk by believing that the 
punishment of the wicked will be eternal. Those who believe 
that all will finally be saved run a tremendous risk. What good 
can result from their belief? What motive have they in their 
belief? Their character will tell us, and hence we believe their 
punishment will be eternal. 

2. Because this is the belief of the good. We like good com- 
pany, and we look with suspicion upon a doctrine that is found 



ANONYMOUS. 487 

in bad company. Who believe that all men will finally be 
saved ? Infidels, Deists, Unitarians, etc. We grant that some 
moral persons have been led into this error, and retained their 
good moral character; but their creed did not improve their 
moral character any. When do they believe this, before or 
after their conversion ? Generally before their conversion. We 
doubt that any converted person can believe this monstrous 
doctrine, because it is not in harmony with the design of the 
Gospel, which teaches us that " denying ungodliness and worldly 
lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly." They can 
never join in the prayer, " Sanctify them through thy truth," 
because the effects produced by preaching this doctrine are not 
seen in the conversion and sanctification of those who believe it. 
The doctrine is not truth, because it will never convert a man, 
and it will never make a moral man of one who is immoral. We 
have here the reason why there are few conversions among 
those who professedly believe that the punishment of the wicked 
will be eternal. Their faith is weak, and they flatter themselves 
that somehow or other they will escape. But those who believe 
that all will escape at last, are wicked men who wish to escape, 
but who love their sins so much that they refuse to part with 
them. "And for this cause God shall send them strong delu- 
sion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be 
damned who believe not the truth, but have pleasure . in 
unrighteousness." 

3. This doctrine is in harmony with the main scope of the 
Bible, but the doctrine of universal salvation is not taught with- 
out giving a false and forced interpretation of those passages 
which refer to the future punishment of the wiaked. Hence the 
hope that God will in future ages " put an end to sin and suffer- 
ing" is "a baseless fabric of a vision." 

4. It is hated and opposed by ungodly men. Wicked men hate 
the truth ; this doctrine is hated by the wicked, therefore it is 
true. If Christ and his apostles had taught that all men will be 
saved, they would not have been opposed and persecuted, and 
they would never have awakened those terrible fears which led 
\nen to ask, " What must we do to be saved ? " 



488 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

5. If the punishment of the wicked is not endless, it is not re^ 
veiled that the duration of it is limited. We ask for proof that 
it is not endless ; but, after they have twisted a few passages of 
Scripture to suit their purpose, the advocates of this doctrine can 
only find two or three texts that may be so interpreted, that 
" possibly they may not mean absolutely endless." 

6. But it is plainly revealed that it is endless. If it is not end- 
less, then Christ was an imperfect revealer of the Father's will, 
and the apostles were all impostors, and the Bible is a very cun- 
ningly devised fable. Even Theodore Parker admitted that 
Christ taught the doctrine of eternal punishment, though he re- 
fused to accept it on his authority. If we accept the authority, 
we must accept the doctrine. If the punishment is not eternal, 
then no language can express the idea, for it is now as plain as 
language can make it. It is " everlasting fire," " the fire that 
never shall be quenched." " Their worm shall not die, neither 
shall their fire be quenched." " Their end is destruction — ever- 
lasting destruction." The wicked will be " wandering stars, to 
whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." " The 
smoke of their torments ascendeth up forever and ever." 
Besides, in many passages it is stated that they shall not escape. 
" Lord, are there few that be saved ? " Christ said, " Many will 
seek to enter in, and shall not be able." " Sinners shall not 
stand in the congregation of the righteous." " They shall not see 
life, but the wrath of God abideth upon them." Their sin shall 
not be forgiven " in the world to come." 

7. There will be no way of escape from that punishment. It 
is admitted that the fire is everlasting, though it is denied that 
the punishment is. How will they escape ? God is angry with 
the wicked, and his anger will remain long as their sin and guilt 
will remain. They can't escape his wrath. Out of that prison 
they shall not come till they have paid the last mite. How will 
they pay the first mite ? Will their sufferings atone for their 
sins? "A great ransom will not deliver them." " The redemp- 
tion of the soul is precious, and it ceaseth forever." Christ shall 
reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet, and after that 
he will deliver up his kingdom, and the wicked " shall be 



ANONYMOUS. 489 

punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the 
Lord, and from the glory of his power." 

Again : " Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." 
Will penal fire take the place of the Holy Ghost, and change the 
hearts of the damned ? Will the flames of hell have more 
cleansing power than the afflictions of life ? " He that is unjust, 
let him be unjust still : he that is filthy, let him be filthy still." 

Again : " Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." But 
suffering will not produce repentance. " Ye will revolt more 
and more." "It is impossible to renew them again into repent- 
ance." " Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer." 
How will they get rid of their sin ? Some say "by the sovereign 
act of God." He will extinguish all evil. Then they will not 
escape because they will have suffered long enough. But if the 
sovereign will of God can extinguish evil, then the death of 
Christ was unnecessary. That argument will not stand. Others 
say, the wicked will escape when they will have suffered long 
enough. Then their salvation will be through suffering, and 
will have merit; but the Bible says, " Ye are saved by grace." 
Others say, that in future ages the wicked will see their sin and 
folly, and repent and believe and be saved. This carries man's 
free agency into hell, and, with it, there will be increased ability 
to refuse and resist. Others say, they will not always be able 
to resist the love and mercy of God. They must yield at last. 
This will destroy their free agency then, for if they must yield, 
they will have no choice. 

How hard it is to defend error ! Some one has said, " It takes 
more faith to believe that they will escape, than it takes to make 
a man a Christian." 

8. This doctrine is in harmony with the perfections of God. 
Universalists say it is not just that man should be punished for- 
ever, for the few sins of this life. Is it just that he should suffer 
at all ? Who can vindicate the justice of God, so far as the 
sufferings of this life are concerned ? Who can tell the infinite 
demerit of sin ? If it is not just that he should suffer, why does 
he not cease from sin? If men suffer for their sins, and it is 
just, then it is just that they should suffer forever, if their sins 



4 9 q PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

remain forever unrepented and unforgiven. Besides, if they 
will be saved after they have suffered long enough, their salva- 
tion will not be through mercy. They could then demand 
admission to heaven ; but there they sing " unto him that 
washed us." 

The mercy of God is a favorite theme with many. He is too 
merciful to punish forever. But evil does exist in the face of 
mercy. If mercy could save the sinner at last, why not now ? 
Will God be any more merciful hereafter than he is now ? Will 
the sufferings of the sinner make him compassionate ? Mercy 
is free and sovereign, not bought or deserved. Mercy does not 
conflict with justice and holiness. 

The wisdom of God, we are told, can devise some way to get 
rid of sin and suffering, and deliver the wicked out of their 
future torments. If infinite wisdom can devise a better scheme 
than has been devised, then the wisdom of God was at fault in 
not putting it in execution. But if the blood of the atonement 
cannot save a man, nothing else will save him, for " there is no 
other name given under heaven, or among men, whereby we can 
be saved, but the name of Jesus." 

The power of God is equal to man's need ; and we are told 
that he can, if he will, put an end to sin and suffering. We know 
he is able to save the whole race. He wills not the death of 
any; but the will of man frustrates the will of God. 

— W. S. McC. 
WHAT DENIAL INVOLVES. 

It is a fact, that the denial of post-mortem retribution neces- 
sitates one of two conclusions, both of which are equally con- 
trary to the Scriptures. Only three conceptions can be formed 
in the case: first, that there is no future life ; or, second, that the 
future life is one of reward and blessing for the good, and of 
punishment and misery for the wicked ; or, third, that the future 
life is a scene of equal blessedness for all alike. There are no 
other possibilities to be thought of. 

Now, if we take the first of these theories, we plainly contra- 
dict the Scriptures. Christ died ; but it was not the end of him. 
He rose again the third day, reappeared unto men, and avouched 



JOSEPH A. SE/SS, D.D. 491 

his continued existence by forty days' converse witn men prior 
to his ascent to glory. Moses died, and was buried ; but more 
than a thousand years afterwards he was seen, recognized, and 
heard to speak, in company with Elijah, amid the glories of the 
mount at the transfiguration of Christ. The man spoken of in 
the text died, and was buried ; but his existence, his conscious- 
ness, and his sensible animation, were, in some sort, continued. 
Abraham died, and was buried ; but Christ represents him as 
still living as to his spiritual being. Death is not the termina- 
tion of the entire being, or else he that killeth the body doth at 
the same time kill the soul ; but Christ says that they that can 
kill the body cannot kill the soul. Nor is there anything 
clearer than that the Scriptures teach the doctrine of a life be- 
yond death. 

Then, if we deny the doctrine of future punishment, there is 
nothing left to us but to believe that all who enter the next 
life are alike happy. But this involves us in consequences as 
shocking to all reason and instinct as they are contrary to the 
teachings of the divine word. If there be no penal retribution 
hereafter, then the inherent and eternal distinction between vir- 
tue and vice, between good and evil, between morality and 
crime, is utterly confounded, and we are driven into straits 
which torture all our feelings of propriety, and dislocate all sen- 
sibilities of right. Deny that there is a future punishment, and 
you must believe that the holiest saint and the vilest sinner are 
precisely on the same footing for eternity — that the prayerful, 
obedient, self-denying, and devout Christian, suffering even to 
death for his faith in his Redeemer, is no better off when he 
dies, and has no higher portion for his pains, than the blas- 
phemous atheist, who has made it his religion to give entire 
license to all the wickedness to which his evil heart prompted — - 
that the best and worst of men will all sit down in one and the 
same happy fellowship in the eternal kingdom ! Deny future 
retribution, and you must believe that the monstrous butcher of 
his unoffending wife and defenceless children need only apply a 
loaded pistol to his brain to find himself in the midst of holy 
angels, welcomed to their embraces, and freed forever from all 



492 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

regrets, all remorse, all danger of being called to account for 
his bloody deeds ! Deny future retribution, and you must be- 
lieve that he who dies in a brothel, drunk and cursing, and wal- 
lowing in his filth, goes at once to walk the golden streets of 
the New Jerusalem, and to receive the crown of a glorious im- 
mortality ! Deny future retribution, and you must believe that 
the dying sot, stupid as a brute from the misuse of what was 
needed to give his starving children bread, wakes from his 
Bacchanalian sleep and degradation to join in the anthems of 
seraphim and cherubim ! Deny future retribution, and you must 
believe that it is not in the power of man to forfeit heaven, or 
to stay out of it by any possibility. H^ may lie, and steal, and 
riot, and murder, and roll in deepest infamy, until his wicked- 
ness becomes an inconvenience, and then only needs to open 
an artery in his own body in order to go and eat of the tree 
of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God! Deny 
future retribution, and you must believe that a few cents' worth 
of arsenic or opium will do more for a man, and transfer him 
quicker to the blessedness of the redeemed, than all the lifelong 
toil, devotion, and faithfulness of a true servant of God ! Deny 
future retribution, and you must conclude that the sheerest un- 
wisdom, folly, and spending of strength for naught, is not at 
all on the side of the wicked and ungodly, but wholly on the 
side of the prophets, apostles, martyrs, reformers, and self-sacri- 
ficing servants of society and their kind, seeing that they are 
not a whit advantaged by it, beyond any of the vile herd who 
eschew all faith and all charity ! Deny future retribution, and 
you must take it as your expectation to have as your immortal 
associates such people as Judas, who betrayed his Lord ; Herod, 
who butchered a thousand babes to destroy the life of the Son 
of God ; Nero and Caligula, who tormented the saints for pas- 
time, and all the marauders, pirates, prostitutes, drunkards, blas- 
phemers, and base villains that ever disgraced humanity ! All 
this is most harsh, intolerable, revolting to every feeling of con- 
gruity or propriety. It contradicts conscience. It stultifies 
reason. It tramples every instinct of man under foot. It plucks 
up by the roots all idea of righteousness. It transmutes virtue 



SEISS— BARNES. 



493 



itself into a species of crime against one's own well-being. Yet 
this we must accept if we admit a future existence, and yet deny 
that there is a hell. — Joseph A. Seiss, D. D. 

THE FACT NOT CHANGED BY HUMAN FEELINGS. 

Human opinions and human feelings have no bearing on 
this doctrine. They do not, they cannot affect it. The Bible 
travels on from age to age bearing the same fearful doctrine, and 
is unchanged in its warnings and appeals. Some of each gen- 
eration listen, are admonished, and saved ; the rest pass on and 
die. Human opinion does not alter facts. Human opinion does 
not remove death-beds, and graves, and sorrows, nor will it re- 
move and annihilate the world of woe. Facts stand unaffected 
by the changes of human belief; and fearful events roll on just 
as though men expected them. 

Nine-tenths of all the dead expected not to die at the time 
when in fact they have died, and more than half now listen to 
no admonition that death will ever come. They who have died 
had an expectation that they would live many years. But death 
came. He was not stayed by their belief or unbelief: he came 
steadily on. Each day he took a stride towards them — and step 
by step he advanced, so that they could not retreat or evade 
him till he was near enough to strike ; and they fell. And so, 
though the living will not hear, death comes to them. And so 
the doom of the sinner rolls on. Each day, each hour, each 
moment, it draws near. Whether he believes it or not makes 
no difference in the fact ; it comes. It will not recede. In spite 
of all attempts to reason, or to forget it, the time comes ; and at 
the appointed time the sinner dies. Cavil and ridicule do not 
affect this. There is no power in a joke to put away convul- 
sions, and fevers, and groans. The laugh and the song close 
no grave, and put back none of the sorrows of the second death. 
The dwellers in Pompeii could not put back the fires of the 
volcano by derision, nor would the mockery of the inhabitants of 
Sodom have stayed the sheets of flame that came from heaven. 
The scoffing sinner dies, and is lost just like others; the young 
man that has learned to cavil and deride religion dies just like 



424 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

others. No cavil has yet changed a fact ; none has ever stayed 
the arrow of death. — Albert Barnes. 



A false attitude toward the truth of God is wicked and fatal. 
Arsenic is not nutritious to the man who may believe it to be so. 
The little child that believes a lighted candle to be a pretty, 
harmless plaything, and puts its fingers in the flame, is not saved 
from torture by its belief. No more certainly will physical than 
moral truth assert itself against all wrong faiths. 

—Bishop E. M. Marvin, D. D. f LL. D. 

EMPLOYMENTS OF THE L@ST. 

We can hardly think of employment in such a state of dis- 
order and wretchedness. Employment indicates order, social 
organization, confidence, and security at least in some degree. 
And, moreover, employment is associated with the idea of ac- 
quisition, and possession, and benevolence, and the supply of 
wants, and is therefore a source of contentment and enjoyment. 
None of these can have place in that region of anarchy and 
despair. On this subject thought and expression can be only 
negative. 

There will be no worship there, no service of God, no recur- 
ring day of rest, no refreshing exercise for the troubled, an- 
guished spirit,, no pleasant service or exercise for body or mind. 

" In that dark realm of deep despair 

No Sabbath's heavenly light will rise, 
No one to God address a prayer, 
Or heavenward lift imploring eyes." 

There will be no voice of prayer, no hymn of praise, no con- 
fession or thanksgiving. Not even the songs of drunkenness 
and ribaldry will be heard there. There will be neither heart 
nor harmony of soul to sing. Rather, if any sound breaks the 
sullen silence, it will be the voice of cursing and blasphemy, 
hoarse tones of discord and groans of pain, " weeping, wailing, 
and gnashing of teeth." 

There will be no pursuit of knowledge, no acquisition, no oc- 



ADKINS—HAR TLE Y— ADAMS. 



495 



cupation, no diversion, no relief, no hope, but one continuous 
monotony of pain and woe. — E. Adkins, D. D. 



The eternity of future punishment seems to have been a gen- 
eral tradition, previous to the appearance of Christianity, among 
both Jews and pagans, and has been the doctrine of the Chris- 
tian world ever since. — Dr. Hartley. 

RETRIBUTIVE SUFFERINGS. 

Now, the Bible is continually representing the wicked as re- 
ceiving from God positive inflictions, and not merely as being 
abandoned to themselves. Even when it speaks of many sources 
of misery which might seem to be the natural consequences of 
their sins, it often represents these consequences as being ad- 
ministered by the direct agency of the Almighty. So that the 
two things seem to be combined. " Upon the wicked he shall 
rain snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest ; this 
shall be the portion of their cup." " Now consider this, ye that 
forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to 
deliver." " God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn 
not, he will whet his sword ; he hath bent his bow and made it 
ready." These passages teach that sinners will not merely be 
left to the natural consequences of sin. The ideas of arrest and 
of execution are here presented ; the transgressor is not left to 
himself, with merely his sin for his punishment. Then, again, 
we read : " Woe unto the wicked ; it shall be ill with him ; for 
the reward of his hands shall be given him." " Yea, woe unto 
them also when I depart from them." Even though the wicked 
should not suffer otherwise, nor to a greater degree, than they 
are capable of suffering in their minds here, yet, if they are to be 
punished, these sufferings must be kept active by an outward 
power ; for their natural tendency is to harden and stupefy, or to 
excite passions whose gratification affords a certain redress. 

All this we may believe without venturing one step into the 
dominion of fancy to depict the kind and manner of those inflic- 
tions which are necessary to constitute punishment. Nor is it 
necessarv : f or, knowing as w~ do by experience and observation 



49 6 



PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 



what the passions of the human heart are when restraint is 
weakened or removed, we need no external images of woe to 
represent what it must be for God to minister excitement to 
them by his presence and his intercourse with them. In a sense 
he departs from them, as he did from Saul. By this is signified 
the withdrawal of everything merciful, alleviating, Hopeful, and 
of a restraining reformatory nature. Yet he will always make 
his presence to be felt; for " if I make my bed in hell, behold 
thou art there." While, therefore, material images of woe, if too 
specific, seem to degrade the subject, and are apt to pass over, 
in their effect on some, from the extreme of horror to the gro- 
tesque, they are not objectionable on the score of over- state- 
ment; notning which fancy ever depicted being capable of 
expressing the misery which must be felt by a depraved soul 
opposed to God and with God for its punisher. We have only 
to think of what is sometimes felt at funerals and closing graves, 
to see what future misery must be in one of its merely inciden- 
tal forms — the loss of all good forever. If God shall but keep 
perpetually fresh such sorrows as men feel here, he will fulfil a 
large part of that which the Saviour and the apostles have de- 
clared to be the future portion of the wicked. So that when 
good men like Leighton, Baxter, Andrew Fuller, the Wesleys, 
Watts and Edwards, portray, according to their several concep- 
tions, the pains of the 'wicked, they fall far below the truth; and 
their representations, if at all objectionable, are not so for the 
reason that they surpass the dread reality ; for that is impossible. 

—Nehemiah Adams. 



Human nature revolts from the very name of future punish- 
ment. But the sacred Scriptures seem to be on the other side, 

— -Dr. Thomas Burnett 

THE PLAINT OF A LOST SOUL. 

My little span 
Of mortal life, inui-ed and siereotyped, 
Is branded on the tablet of my soul 
Each, year, each month, each week, each i'uy, each noMf, 



BICKERS TE TH—SA URIN. 497 

As drowning men have lived their bygone life 

Again in one brief minute, so to me, 

Each minute of these ages without end, 

My past is always present. Now I see 

Myself. 'Twas not apostasy alone 

Damn'd me : this seal'd my ruin ; but my life 

Was one rebellion, one ingratitude. 

God would, but could not save me 'gainst my will, 

Moved, drawn, besought, persuaded, striven with, 

But yet inviolate, or else no will, 

And I no man— for man by birth is free. 

Angel, He would, I would not. Further space 

Would but have loaded me with deeper guilt. 

Yea, now I fear that if the Eye of flame 

Which rests upon me everlastingly 

Soften'd its terrors, sin would yet revive 

In me and bear again disastrous fruit, 

And this entail more torturing r-emorse. 

Better enforced subjection. I have ceased, 

Or almost ceased, to struggle against the Hand 

That made me. For I madly chose to die : 

I sold my immortality for death ; 

And death, eternal distance from his love, 

Eternal nearness to his righteous wrath, 

Death now is my immortal recompense. 

I know it, I confess it, I submit. — Edward Henry Bickersteffr. 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

A man who opposeth the doctrine of eternal punishment 
reasons in this manner : Which way soever I consider a being 
supremely perfect, I cannot persuade myself that he will expose 
his creatures to eternal torments. All his perfections secure me 
from such terrors as this doctrine seems to inspire. If I con- 
sider the Deity as a being perfectly free, it should seem, although 
he has denounced sentences of condemnation, yet he retains a 
right of revoking, or of executing them to the utmost rigor; 
whence I infer that no man can determine what use he will 
make of his liberty. When I consider God as a good being, I 
cannot make eternal punishment agree with infinite mercy; 
bowels of compassion seem incongruous with devouring flames ; 
the titles merciful and gracious seem incompatible with the exe- 
cution of this sentence, Depart ye cursed into evenasting fire I 
32 



4<pg PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED, 

In short, when I consider God under the idea of an equitable 
legislator, I cannot comprehend how sins committed in a finite 
period can deserve an infinite punishment. Let us suppose a 
life the most long and criminal that ever was; let the vices of all 
mankind be assembled, if possible, in one man ; let the duration 
of his depravity be extended from the beginning of the world to 
the dissolution of it : even in this case sin would be finite, and 
infinite everlasting punishment would far exceed the demerit of 
finite transgression, and consequently the doctrine of everlasting 
punishment is inconsistent with Divine justice. 

There are libertines, who invent these difficulties, and take 
pains to confirm themselves in the belief of them, in order to 
diminish those just fears which an idea of hell would excite in 
their souls, and to enable them to sin boldly. Let us not enter 
into a detail of answers and replies with people of this kind. 
Were we to grant all they seem to require, it would be easy to 
prove, to a demonstration, that there is a world of extravagance 
in deriving the least liberty to sin from these objections. If, in- 
stead of a punishment enduring forever, hell were only the 
suffering of a thousand years' torments, were the sufferer during 
these thousand years only placed in the condition of a man ex- 
cruciated with disease; must not a man give up all claim to 
common sense before he could, even on these suppositions, 
abandon himself to sin * Are not all the charms employed by 
the devil to allure us to sin absorbed in the idea of a thousand 
years' pain, to which, for argument's sake, we have supposed 
eternal punishment reduced ? How pitiable is a man in dying 
agonies who has nothing to oppose against the terrors of death 
but this opinion — Perhaps hell may be less in degree, and 
shorter in duration, than the Scriptures represent. 

Some Christian divines, in zeal for the glory of God, have 
yielded to these objections; and, under pretence of having met 
with timorous people, whom the doctrine of eternal punishment 
had terrified into doubts concerning the divine perfections, they 
thought it their duty to remove this stumbling-block. They 
have ventured to presume that the idea which God had given 
of eternal punishment was only intended to alarm the impeni- 



JAMES SAURIN. ^gg 

tent, and that it was very probable God would at last relax the 
rigorous sentence. But if it were allowed that God had no other 
design in denouncing eternal punishments than that of alarming 
sinners, would it become us to oppose his wise purpose, and 
with our unhallowed hands to throw down the batteries which 
he had erected against sin ? Let us preach the gospel as God 
hath revealed it. God did not think the doctrine of everlasting 
punishment injurious to the holiness of his attributes. Let us 
not pretend to think it will injure them. 

None of these reflections remove the difficulty. We proceed 
then to open other sources of solution. 

Observe this general truth. It is not probable God would 
threaten mankind with a punishment the infliction of which 
would be incompatible with his perfections. If the reality of 
such a hell as the Scriptures describe be inconsistent with the 
perfections of the Creator, such a hell ought not to have been 
affirmed, yea, it could not have been revealed. The eminence 
of the holiness of God will not allow him to terrify his creatures 
with the idea of a punishment which he cannot inflict without 
injustice; and considering the weakness of our reason, and the 
narrow limits of our knowledge, we ought not to say, Such a 
thing is unjust, therefore it is not revealed : but, on the contrary, 
we should rather say, Such a thing is revealed, therefore it is 
just. 

Take any part of the objection drawn from the attributes of 
God, and said to destroy our doctrine, and consider it separately. 
The argument taken from the liberty of God would carry us 
from error to error, and from one absurdity to another. For, if 
God be free to relax any part of the punishment denounced, 
he is equally free to denounce the whole. If we may infer that he 
will certainly release the sufferer from a part, because he is at 
liberty to do so, we have an equal right to presume he will re- 
lease from the whole, and there would be no absurdity in affirm- 
ing the one after we had allowed the other. If there be no 
absurdity in presuming that God will release the whole punish- 
ment denounced against the impenitent, behold ! all systems of 
conscience, providence, and religion fall of themselves, and, if 



5°° 



PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 



these systems fall, what, pray, become of all these perfections 
of God, which you pretend to defend ! 

The objection taken from the liberty of God might seem to 
have some color, were hell spoken of only in passages where 
precepts were enforced by threatenings : but attend to the places 
in which Jesus Christ speaks of it. Read, for example, the 
twenty-fifth of Matthew, and there you will perceive, are facts, 
prophecies, and exact and circumstantial narrations. There it 
is said, the world shall end, Jesus Christ shall descend from 
heaven, there shall be a judgment of mankind, the righteous 
shall be rewarded, the wicked shall be punished, shall go away 
into everlasting punishment. How can these things be recon- 
ciled to the truth of God, if he fail to execute any one of 
these articles ? 

The difficulty taken from the goodness of God vanisheth, 
when we rectify popular notions of this excellence of the divine 
nature. Goodness in men is a virtue of constitution, which 
makes them suffer when they see their fellow-creatures in 
misery, and which excites them to relieve them. In God it is 
a perfection independent in its origin, free in its execution, 
and always restrained by laws of inviolable equity, and exact 
severity. 

Justice is not incompatible with eternal punishment. It is 
not to be granted, that a sin committed in a limited time ought 
not to be punished through an infinite duration. It is not the 
length of time employed in committing a crime, that determines 
the degree and duration of its punishment, it is the turpitude 
and atrociousness of it. The justice of God, far from opposing 
the punishment of the impenitent, requires it. Consider this 
earth, which supports us, the sun, which illuminates us, the ali- 
ments, that nourish us, all the creatures, which serve us ; are 
they not so many motives to men to devote their service to 
God? Consider the patience of God, what opportunities of 
repentance he gives sianers, what motives and means he affords 
them. Above all, enter into the sanctuary ; meditate on the 
incarnate word, comprehend, if you can, what it is for a God to 
make himself of no reputation and to take upon him the form of a 



J A MES SA URIN. 5 O \ 

servant: Phil. ii. 7. Consider the infinite excellence of God, 
approach his throne, behold his eyes sparkling with fire, the 
power and majesty that fill his sanctuary, the heavenly hosts 
which around his throne fulfil his will ; form, if it be possible, 
some idea of the Supreme Being. Then think, this God united 
himself to mortal flesh, and suffered for mankind all the rigors 
that the madness of men and the rage of devils could invent. 
I cannot tell what impression these objects make on you. For 
my part, I ingenuously own, that, could anything render Chris- 
tianity doubtful to me, what it affirms of this mystery would 
do so. I have need, I declare, of all my faith, and of all the 
authority of him who speaks in Scripture, to persuade me, that 
God would condescend to such a humiliation as this. If, amidst 
the darkness, which conceals this mystery, I discover any glim- 
mering, that reduces it in a sort to my capacity, it arises from 
the sentence of eternal punishment, which God has threatened 
to inflict on all who finally reject this great sacrifice. Having 
allowed the obligations, under which the incarnation lays man- 
kind, everlasting punishment seems to me to have nothing in 
it contrary to divine justice No, the burning lake with its 
smoke, eternity with its abysses, devils with their rage, and hell 
with all its horrors seem to me not at all too rigorous for the 
punishment of men who have trodden under foot the Son of 
God, counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, cruci- 
fied the Son of God afresh, and done despite unto the Spirit of 
grace : Heb. x. 29 and vi. 6. Every objection against this doc- 
trine finds an equally ready solution. Take the doctrine of 
degrees of punishment. I have often observed with astonish- 
ment the little use that Christians in general make of this article, 
since the doctrine itself is taught in Scripture in the clearest 
manner. When we speak of future punishment, we call it all 
Hell indifferently, and without distinction. We conceive of all 
the wicked as precipitated into the same gulph, loaded with the 
same chains, devoured by the same worm. We do not seem to 
think there will be as much difference in their state as there had 
been in their natural capacities, their exterior means of obtain- 
ing knowledge, and their various aids to assist them in their 



502 



PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 



pursuit of it. We do not recollect, that, as perhaps there may 
be two men in the world who have alike partaken the gifts of 
heaven, so probably there will not be two wicked spirits in hell 
enduring an equal degree of punishment. There is an extreme 
difference between a heathen and a Jew ; there is an extreme 
distance between a Jew and a Christian ; and a greater still be- 
tween a Christian and a heathen. The gospel rule is, Unto 
whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required : 
Luke xii. 48. There must therefore be as great a difference in 
the other life between the punishment of a Jew and that of a 
pagan, between that of a pagan and that of a Christian, as there 
is between the states in which God has placed them on earth. 
Moreover, there is a very great difference between one Jew and 
another, between pagan and pagan, Christian and Christian. 
Each hath in his own economy more or less talents. There 
must therefore be a like difference between the punishment of 
one Christian and that of another, the punishment of one Jew 
and that of another, the sufferings of one pagan and that of 
another : and consequently, when we say, a pagan wise accord- 
ing to his own economy, and a Christian foolish according to 
his, are both in hell, we use very vague and equivocal manner. 

To how many difficulties have men submitted by not attending 
to this doctrine of degrees of punishment ! As eternal punish- 
ment has been considered under images, that excite all the most 
excruciating pains, it could not be imagined how God should 
condemn the wise heathens to a state that seemed suited only to 
monsters, who disfigure nature and subvert society. Some, 
therefore, to get rid of this difficulty, have widened the gate of 
heaven, and allowed other ways of arriving there beside that, 
whereby we must be saved: Acts iv. 12. Cato, Socrates, and 
Aristides have been mixed with the multitude redeemed to God 
out of every people and nation : Rev. v. 9. Had the doctrine 
of diversity of punishments been properly attended to, the con- 
demnation of the heathens would not have appeared inconsistent 
with the perfections of God, provided it had been considered 
only as a punishment proportional to what was defective in their 
state, and criminal in their life. For no one has a right to tax 



JAMES SAURIN. 503 

God with injustice for punishing pagans, unless he could prove 
that the degree of their pain exceeded that of their sin. 

But, above all, the doctrine of degrees of punishment eluci- 
dates that of the eternity of them. Take this principle which ' 
Scripture establisheth in the clearest manner ; press home all its 
consequences ; extend it as far as it can be carried ; give scope 
even to your imagination, till the punishments which such and 
such persons suffer in hell are reduced to a degree that may 
serve to solve the difficulty of the doctrine of their eternity; 
whatever system you adopt on this article, whatever difficulty yon 
may meet with in following it, it will always be more reasonable 
to make of one doctrine clearly revealed a clue to guide through 
the difficulties of another doctrine clearly revealed too, than 
rashly to deny the formal decisions of Scripture. I mean to say, 
it would be more rational to stretch the doctrine of degrees too 
far, if I may venture to speak so, than to deny that of their 
eternity. — jfames Sanrin. 

THE WAY OF ESCAPE. 

If there were only one passage in the whole Bible plainly 
teaching the doctrine of future retribution it would outweigh all 
the sentimental objections of the skeptical world. But instead 
of one there are hundreds, nay, this truth is so completely inter* 
woven in the whole inspired fabric that to reject it is practically 
to shut out the entire volume and render its teachings of none 
effect. In other words, if the Bible doctrine of hell be invali- 
dated, so also is the Bible doctrine of heaven, redemption and 
Christian experience. 

But these doctrines cannot be overthrown. As far as Scrip- 
ture can be put to the test of experience it is found to be true. 
" He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." Millions 
who have believed testify to the experience of salvation. They 
have tested the promise and realized its fulfilment. Now, why 
should not the remainder of the same passage prove true also 
— "He that believeth not shall be damned?" It certainly will. 
He that believeth not is condemned already, and only waits 
God's order to find that condemnation fixed and eternal. This 



504 PUNISHMENT OF THE WICKED. 

is the natural course of things. The current of evil bears guilty 
souls downward to perdition. The sinner's career inevitably 
ends in hell. 

Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. Given a nature 
that cannot be annihilated, that death must prove eternal, and 
involve all the horrors depicted by inspired or uninspired men. 

True, the evangelical doctrine of future retribution is fearful, 
but it is "better to fear hell than to feel it." Were exaggeration 
possible at this point, it would be safer than modification. Give 
the outlaws of the land, who now often escape man's punish- 
ment, the slightest reason to suspect that they can escape God's 
punishment, even after ten thousand ages, and there is no surer 
way to let riot loose. Fear of hell is a more powerful motive to 
hold some in check than desire for heaven. They need to hear 
the terrors of the law as well as the peace of the gospel. No 
faltering tongue should proclaim to them, 

"The sinner's doom, the sinner's doom, 

How dark the agony 
That haunts transgressors to the tomb, 
Then preys on endlessness to come, 

Whose worm may never die." 

How unnecessary is the peril in which the impenitent involve 
themselves ! By the death of Christ a way of escape is provided. 
It is too strait for sin, for 1 selfishness, for worldliness, for unbe- 
lief, but wide enough for faith, for obedience, for love, human 
and divine. Jesus is the light of that pathway, and that radi- 
ance is health, joy, peace, holiness, and heaven. All who will 
may walk therein, and finding life, experience a foretaste of unend- 
ing bliss hereafter. It is this blessed truth which relieves the 
doctrine of future punishment of every imputation of cruelty or 
injustice. "As I live, saith God, I have no pleasure in the 
death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and 
live." — The Editor. 




The happiness of the soul in its glorified state is a doctrine which 
commands the united faith of Christendom. Here right- 
eousness and peace have met together ; mercy 

and truth have kissed each other. [505] 



" In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were 
not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for 
you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there 
ye may be also."— John xiv. 2, 3. 

"There is a land where everlasting suns 

Shed everlasting brightness ; where the soul 
Drinks from the living streams of love that roll 

By God's high throne ! myriads of glorious ones 
Bring their accepted offering. O ! how blest 

To look from this dark prison to that shrine 

To inhale one breath of Paradise divine, 
And enter into that eternal rest 

Which waits the sons of God."— Bowring. 



(506) 




REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

THE BOUNDLESSNESS OF THE UNIVERSE. 

N angel once took a man and stripped him of his flesh, 
and lifted him up into space to show him the glory of 
u the universe. When the flesh was taken away the man 
g ceased to be cowardly, and was ready to fly with the 
angel past galaxy after galaxy, and infinity after infinity, 
and so man and angel passed on, viewing the universe, until the 
sun was out of sight — until our solar system appeared as a speck 
of light against the black empyrean, and there was only dark- 
ness. And they looked onward, and in the infinities of light 
before, a speck of light appeared, and suddenly they were in the 
midst of rushing worlds. But they passed beyond that system, 
and beyond system after system, and infinity after infinity, until 
the human heart sank, and the man cried out, "End is there 
none of the universe of God ? " The angel strengthened the 
man by words of counsel and courage, and they flew on again 
until worlds left behind them were out of sight, and specks of 
light in advance were transformed, as they approached them, 
into rushing systems ; they moved over architraves of eternities, 
over pillars of immensities, over architecture of galaxies, un- 
speakable in immensities and duration, and the human heart 
sank again and called out, " End is there none of the universe 
of God ? " And all the stars echoed the question with amaze- 
ment, " End is there none to the universe of God ? " And this 
echo found no answer. They moved on again, passed immen- 
sities of immensities, and eternities of eternities, until, in the 
dizziness of uncounted galaxies, the human heart sank for the 
last time, and called out, " End is there none of the universe of 
God ? " And again all the stars repeated the question, and the 

(507) 



508 



REWARD OF THE RIGH1E0US. 



angel answered : " End is there none of the universe of God. 
Lo, also, there is no beginning." — Richter. 

GRANDEUR OF THE SOUL'S DESTINY. 

Heir of immortality, bow before thine own majesty. Debase 
not thyself by sordid actions. A royal infant, while in his 
nurse's arms, though unconscious of his dignity, is yet born to 
sway the sceptre and fate of nations, and should be trained up 
in habits according with his august destinies. Whilst thou art 
pursuing every idle phantom, thou forgettest the dignity of thy 
nature and the infinite grandeur of thy destinies. But thou wast 
born for great things. Those eyes were formed to see great 
things, and that soul to experience amazing sensations. Man, 
thou hast a world in thyself. Child of death, thou hast a con- 
cealed treasure in thy bosom (alas ! too concealed), which the 
exhaustless Indies could not purchase. Crowns and kingdoms 
sink to nothing before it. It is worth more than the sun, moon 
and stars, if the sun were gold and every star a ruby. If, from 
the birthday of this earth, Omnipotence had been exerted to 
create as many worlds in a moment as there are dusts in this, 
and all these worlds were gold and diamond, and possession to 
be given for eternity, they would all be like filth of the street to 
the value of thy soul. — Rev. E. D. Griffen, D. D. 

THE VISION OF THE DEITY. 

In every inspired description of heaven, the Shekinah, or the 
visible presence of God, is made prominent. This might be ex- 
pected if the antitype corresponds with the type; and, if heaven 
be an advanced stage of the manifestation of the Deity to man, 
we should look for a richer display of the divine glory, and a 
more perfect consciousness of the divine presence. Hence the 
city selected to prefigure the eternal residence was not classic 
Athens or imperial Rome, though adorned with statuary ^ 
studded with temples, and rich in historic fame. No, but the 
capital of Judea, because there Jehovah's presence was wont to 
be displayed to his worshippers. Yet this is the New Jerusalem, 
because of its purity and the richer glory which fills it as the 



WILLIAM COOKE, D.D. 50^ 

shrine of the divine majesty. "And I saw no temple therein," 
says the enraptured John, as he gazed on its unearthly radiance; 
" I saw no temple therein : for the Lord God Almighty and the 
Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the 
sun, neither of the moon to shine in it: for the glory of God did 
lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." The allusion 
here cannot be misunderstood. In the holy of holies of the 
earthly Jerusalem there was neither natural nor artificial light : 
no golden lamp shone within its walls, and not a ray of the sun 
could enter there ; nor was there need for them, for that sacred 
place was illumined by the glory of the Shekinah, which occa- 
sionally filled the temple with supernatural brightness, and 
shone forth to the view of the joyful crowd of worshippers 
without. So in the heavenly city, the sun and moon shed not 
their rays. Nor is there need for the reflection or emission of 
light from any natural luminary, because the actual personal 
presence of Jehovah fills it with glory. Even the temple itself 
is dispensed with in the celestial city, because the vision of God 
is there unveiled, and access to him is without the intervention 
of symbolic rites. The earthly temple, while forming a shrine 
for the Shekinah, was a mode of its concealment from the ordi- 
nary view of the people^ The glory was curtained off and shut 
in, so that the radiant symbol was enthroned in solitary majesty 
in the most holy place. But in the New Jerusalem no temple 
is seen, for no external shade is required ; and in the brightness 
of a better dispensation, concealment and restriction have dis- 
appeared. In leaving earth, the spirits of the just leave the 
outer court and enter within the veil, into the Holy of holies — 
into heaven itself, the presence-chamber of the Divine Majesty , 
and live continually within its brightness. No walls there form 
a barrier between God and his people, not even the temple 
walls, not even the veil of the temple, for the saints dwell in his 
immediate presence. No cloud shrouds his radiant Majesty 
from their gaze ; but they all with open face behold his glory, 
and there is neither darkness nor distance between them and 
God. 

Nor are these representations of the saints, as dwelling in the 



c IO REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

divine presence, to be denuded of their import by the cold criti- 
cism that would resolve them into mere figures of speech. The 
type and symbol belong to earth, the divine reality belongs to 
heaven. In speaking of believers dwelling in the divine pres- 
ence, the Scriptures mean an actual dwelling and an actual 
presence. In speaking of the saints seeing God, they mean an 
actual view of the Deity. The benediction promise of the 
Saviour is, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
God; " the prayer of the Saviour is, "That they may behold my 
glory which thou hast given me ; " and the promise that imme- 
diately follows the description of the blessed in the New Jerusa- 
lem is, "And they shall see his face." These refer to a true and 
proper vision of the Deity. As certainly as the Jews of old saw 
the symbol of God's presence when it filled the sanctuary; as 
certainly as Moses saw the glory of God from the cleft of the 
rock; as certainly as Moses and Elias saw the Redeemer when 
he was transfigured on the mount ; as really as the high priest 
entered the Holy of holies, and saw the radiant cloud between 
the cherubim over the mercy seat; so truly shall the saints enter 
heaven and see the Deity face to face. They shall dwell where 
he is; they shall see him as he is. For then, "behold, the 
tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and 
they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, 
and be their God." 

Here, then, is the first consummation of the believer's aspira- 
tions and hopes. At last the wilderness is left, and the prom-, 
ised paradise is gained ; the weary pilgrim has arrived at home ; 
the absent son and heir has entered his father's house. The 
journey of faith ends in realizing vision and actual possession. 
On earth he loved the Saviour with supreme affection, though 
he saw him not, "whom having not seen he loved; in whom 
though he saw him not, yet believing he rejoiced with joy un- 
speakable and full of glory." Satisfied and delighted with God 
as his portion, he exclaims, " Whom have I in heaven but thee ? 
and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee." But 
love longs for the sight and presence of its object, and while 
faith and hope anticipate, love stimulates the desire for the 



CO OKE—R UTHERFO RD— CLARK. 



5" 



happy hour of realization and possession, and the bitterest sor- 
rows and the deepest sufferings are patiently endured under its 
expectation. Now is that hour come. The happy spirit is with 
Christ, sees him, and at the sight of him eternity opens with 
ever-during bliss. O what a recompense for all our sorrows, 
conflicts and tears, will be found in the first moment we have of 
gazing on the glorified Saviour ! Well, poor, tempted, tried, 
despised and persecuted believer, be patient a little longer, per- 
severe through a few more conflicts and sorrows, and thy Lord 
shall call thee home, and thou shalt be forever with him, to be- 
hold the King in his beauty, and the land that is afar ofT. 

— William Cooke, D. D. 

A going-down star is not annihilated, but shall appear again. 
If he hath casten his bloom and flower, the bloom is fallen in 
heaven in Christ's lap. And as he was lent a while to time, so 
is he given now to eternity, which will take 'yourself, and give 
you a meeting with him. With him ? Nay, but with a better 
company — with the Chief and Leader of the heavenly troops 
that are riding on white horses, that are triumphing in glory. 

— Samuel Rutherford. 
WHAT HEAVEN IMPLIES. 

The state of eternal glory implies three things : I. An absence 
of all suffering, pain, sin, and evil. 2. The presence of all good, 
both of the purest and most exalted kind. And, 3. The com- 
plete satisfaction of all the desires of the soul, at all times, and 
through eternity, without the possibility of decrease on the one 
hand, or of satiety on the other, or of any termination of the 
existence of the receiver or the received. This is ineffably great 
and glorious, but the apostle exceeds all this by saying, " an 
heir of God." It is therefore not heaven merely; it is not the 
place where no ill can enter, and where pure and spiritual good 
is eternally present ; it is not merely a state of endless blessed- 
ness in the regions of glory ; it is God himself; God in his plen- 
itude of glories ; God who, by the eternal communications of 
his glories, meets every wish and satisfies every desire of a death- 
less and imperishable spirit ; which he has created for himself. 



512 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



and of which himself is the only portion. To a soul composed 
of infinite desires, what would the place or state called "heaven " 
be, if God were not there ? God, then, is the portion of the 
soul, and the only portion with which its infinite powers can be 
satisfied. How wonderful is his lot! A child of corruption, 
lately a slave of sin and heir of perdition ; tossed about with 
every storm of life ; in afflictions many and privations oft ; hav- 
ing perhaps scarcely where to lay his head ; and at last pros- 
trated by death, and mingled with the dust of the earth ; but 
now, how changed ! The soul is renewed in glory ; the body 
fashioned after the glorious human nature of Jesus Christ; and 
both joined together in an indestructible bond, clearer than the 
moon, brighter than the sun, and more resplendent than all the 
heavenly spheres ; and, having overcome through the grace of 
Christ, is set down with Jesus on his throne to reign forever 
and ever. — Dr. Adam Clark. 

HEAVEN A PLACE. 

We are accustomed to say that space and time are only con- 
ditions of our finite and composite natures, and that to unfettered 
spirits there would be recognition of neither space nor time. 
Whether this be so or not, no man can tell. It is a transcen- 
dentalism that it is folly to talk about. Time and space are 
absolute necessities to our thinking. Every conception of our 
mind is formed on them as a foundation ; and we can have no 
idea of God himself except as in time and space. Hence we 
must (whether we will or no) take the word " place," in the 
passage, " I go to prepare a place for you," in a literal sense. 
Even if it be not literally a place, we think of it as a place, for 
we cannot think of it in any other way. We are not up to this. 
And, moreover, from the words being used when our Saviour 
might have said simply, " I go to prepare for you," we may in- 
fer that it is actually a place (as we understand the word) that 
is meant here. Farther than that perhaps would be only fancy 
and in that region of fancy we cannot find it profitable to wan- 
der. But that on which we may dwell with profit is, first, that 
the place is prepared by our Lord ; and, secondly, that it is pre- 



CR OSB Y— PALMER. 



513 



pared for us. What a place must that be which Christ prepares, 
which his almighty power and infinite love combined make ready 
for our abode ! It must be a place where every purified desire 
of the heart shall have perpetual satisfaction, and where Christ's 
own happiness shall be shared by those for whom he died. If 
these are to be the characteristics of that future home, it makes 
very little difference what the special forms of occupation, or 
the objective elements beheld by the soul in that better world 
may be. The inner soul longs for happiness — it is only the 
outward and changeable sense that would dictate its form. That 
it is pure and holy and that it has Christ, our Lord and Saviour, 
in it — this is enough. We know the delicious contents of the 
vessel, if we do not know the shape and color of the vessel 
containing. " To depart " is " to be with Christ." 

— Chancellor Howard Crosby ', D.D., LL.D, 

THE BLESSED LAND. 

But now »hey desire a better country, that is, a heavenly : wherefore God is not ashamed to be called 
their God : for he hath prepared for them a city. — Heb. xi. 16. 

O holy dwelling-place of God ! 

O glorious city all divine ! 
Thy streets, by feet of seraphs trod, 

Shall one glad day be trod by mine ! 

In thee no temple lifts its dome, 

No sun its radiant beam lets fall ; 
For there — of light the eternal home — 

God and the Lamb illumine all ! 

There from exhaustless fountains flow 

The living waters, gushing o'er, 
Which whoso drinks thenceforth shall know 

Earth's ever-craving thirst no more. 

There fresh and fair on every hand, 

Where one unfading summer lives, 
The trees of life unwithering stand, 

Whose fruit immortal vigor gives. 

All lovelier flowers than Eden bare 

When God pronounced his work complete, 

All matchless forms of beauty, there 
The never- wearied eye shall greet. 

33 



£14 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Within the burnished gates abide 

Of God's redeemed the countless throng, 

Who ever while the ages glide 
Serve — in seraphic ardor strong. 

To them the Lamb that fills the throne, 

In love divine unveils his face ; 
While they, with bliss to earth unknown, 

Adore the beauty and the grace. 

No wasting sorrow there is found, 

No cheek is wet with burning tears ; 
Whom those eternal walls surround, 

No foe can reach, no pang, no fears. 

Land of the blest, on faith's keen eye, 

Faint glimpses of thy glory break; 
Oh, when in earth's last sleep I lie, 

Mid thy full splendors let me wake ! — Ray Palmer, D. 3. 

HEAVEN AS A CITY. 

(Rev. xxi. 21 ; xxii. 5.) 

The city is real, with walls and gates, like the gorgeous cap- 
itals of the East. No strange form meets our eye, no awful, 
unbearable brightness. We can imagine ourselves among the 
multitude pausing beside the clear river, delighted with the 
waving glory and luscious fruitage of its living trees. Yet there 
is nothing gross, nothing unspiritual, such as repels us in the 
best descriptions of uninspired pens. 

The splendor of the city, who can paint it ? u Her light was 
like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear 
as crystal," and the city came into the apostle's view a resplen- 
dent flash of mingled hues. These he unravels into gleaming 
foundation stones and glowing gates of lucent pearl, through 
which the very streets blaze forth in transparent gold. Earth's 
rarest gems are scarce rich enough to build the habitation of 
the saints ; its costliest ore must have an added glory to pave 
those streets. 

Another wonder of the city is its size. The angel measured 
its circuit fifteen hundred miles, more than five times the circuit 
of all Palestine, plainly symbolizing the great capacity of 



SOUTHGA TE—BONAR. 



Si 



heaven. Think you the Almighty has purposed to save but 
few ? Every soul of the true spiritual Israel shall be gathered 
out of all nations. . . . 

That city is abiding. It hath foundations. There no blight 
falls upon youth and health, no anguish crowds into the place 
of love. Are there any sick, any homeless, any heartbroken 
on earth ? Look beyond ! 

The city presents itself to us as the place of perfected human- 
ity. A city is the most complete form of human society. In 
the focus of its concentrated wealth, arts and refinements have 
their most luxuriant growth. Social life is most delightful in 
its cultivated circles. All that man can do for man is most per- 
fectly done in the city. — Rev. C. M. Southgate. 

THE NEW JERUSALEM. 

Bathed in unfallen sunlight, 

Itself a sun-born gem, 
Fair gleams the glorious city, 
The new Jerusalem ! 
City fairest, 
Splendor rarest, 

Let me gaze on theet 

Calm in her queenly glory, 

She sits all joy and light : 

Pure in her bridal beauty, 

Her raiment festal- white! 

Home of gladness, 

Free from sadness, 

Let me dwell in the*! 

Shading her golden pavement 

The tree of life is seen, 
Its fruit-rich branches waving, 
Celestial evergreen. 

Tree of wonder, 
Let me under 

Thee forever rest ! 

Fresh from the throne of Godhead 
Bright in its crystal gleam, 



«jl6 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Bursts out the living fountain, 
Swells on trie living stream. 
Blessed river, 
Let me ever 

Feast my eye on thee f 

Streams of true life and gladness, 
Spring of all health and peace ; 
No harps by thee hang silent, 
Nor happy voices cease. 
Tranquil river, 
Let me ever 

Sit and sing by thee i 

River of God, I greet thee, 
Not now afar, but near; 
My soul to thy still waters 
Hastes in its thirstings here. 
Holy river, 
Let me ever 

Drink of only thee l—Horatius Bonar, D. A 

THE INHABITANTS THEREOF. 

Now you must note, that the City stood upon a mighty hill ; 
but the pilgrims went up that hill with ease, because they had 
these two men to lead them up by the arms : they had likewise 
left their mortal garments behind them in the river; for though 
they went in with themy they came out without them. They 
therefore went up here with much agility and speed, though the 
foundation upon which the city was framed was higher than the 
clouds ; they therefore went up through the regions of the air 
sweetly talking as they went, being comforted because they 
safely got over the river, and had such glorious companions to 
attend them. 

The talk that they had with the shining ones was about the 
glory of the place ; who told them that the beauty and glory 
of it was inexpressible. There, said they, is " the Mount Sion, 
the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and 
the spirits of just men made perfect: " Heb. xii. 22-24. You are 
going now, said they, to the paradise of God, wherein you shall 
see the tree of life, and eat of the never-fading fruits thereof: and, 



JOHN B UNYAN. 5 1 y 

when you come there, you shall have white robes given you, 
and your walk and talk shall be every day with the King, even 
all the days of eternity: Rev. ii. 7; iii. 4, 5 : xxii. 5. There you 
shall not see again such things as you saw when you were in 
the lower region upon the earth ; to wit, sorrow, sickness, afflic- 
tion, and death; "for the former things are passed away:" Isa. 
lxv. 16, 17. You are going now to Abraham, to Isaac, and to 
Jacob, and to the prophets, men that God hath taken away from 
the evil to come, and that are now resting upon their beds, 
each one walking in his righteousness. The men then asked, 
What must we do in the holy place? To whom it was answered, 
You must there receive the comfort of all your toil, and have 
joy for all your sorrow; you must reap what you have sown, 
even the fruit of all your prayers, and tears, and sufferings for 
the King by the way: Gal. vi. 7, 8. In that place you must wear 
crowns of gold, and enjoy the perpetual sight and visions of the 
Holy One ; for there you shall see him as he is : 1 John iii. 2. 
There also you shall serve him continually with praise, with 
shouting and thanksgiving, whom you desired to serve in the 
world, though with much difficulty, because of the infirmity 
of your flesh. There your eyes shall be delighted with seeing, 
and your ears with hearing the pleasant voice of the Mighty 
One. There you shall enjoy your friends again that are gone 
thither before you; and there you shall with joy receive even 
every one that follows into the holy place after you. There 
also you shall be clothed with glory and majesty, and put into 
an equipage fit to ride out with the King of Glory. When he 
shall come with sound of trumpet in the clouds, as upon the 
wings of the wind, you shall come with him ; and when he shall 
sit upon the throne of judgment, you shall sit by him; yea, and 
when he shall pass sentence upon all the workers of iniquity, 
let them be angels or men, you also shall have a voice in that 
judgment, because they were his and your enemies. Also, 
when he shall again return to the City, you shall go too with 
sound of trumpet, and be ever with him: 1 Thess. iv. 13-17; 
Jude xiv. 15 ; Dan. vii. 9, IO; 1 Cor. vi. 2, 3. 

— John Bunyan. 



5 i8 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



What would all the external splendors of the celestial city be 
to the besotted sensualist ! He would, amid them all, pine and 
perish for his meats and drinks, as a horse haltered by a golden 
chain to a marble manger, filled with diamonds, would starve for 
want of provender. — Professor J. A. Thome. 

THE LAND WHERE BEAUTY NEVER DIES. 

Beyond these chilly winds and gloomy skies, 

Beyond death's cloudy portal, 
There is a land where beauty never dies, 

And love becomes immortal : 

A land whose light is never dimmed by shade, 

Whose fields are ever vernal ; 
Where nothing beautiful can ever fade, 

But blooms for age eternal. 

We may not know how sweet its balmy air, 

How bright and fair its flowers ; 
We may not hear the songs that echo there, 

Through those enchanted bowers. 

The city's shining towers we may not see 

With our dim earthly vision, 
For death, the silent warden, keeps the key 

That opes these gates Elysian. 

But sometimes — when adown the shining sky 

The fiery sunset lingers, 
Its golden gates swing inward noiselessly, 

Unlocked by unseen fingers; 

And while they stand a moment half ajar, 

Gleams from the inner glory 
Stream brightly through the azure vault afar 

And half reveal the story. 

O, land of love ! O, land of light divine ! 

Father, All wise, Eternal ! 
Guide me, O guide these wandering feet of mine 

Into those gates Supernal ! — Nancy A. W. Priest 



CARPENTER— AD KINS. 5 1 9 

THE MOUNT OF GOD. 

Sometimes, when faith's sky is clear and this atmosphere is 
luminous in Christ's smile, the mount of God stands out so 
boldly, it draws so nigh, as if the distance were a mere step of 
thought, as if the summit stooped to kiss us — but always it is 
there, clad in evergreens, kindred immortals. The day dawns 
of access and of ascent ; and when we climb its lofty peaks, and 
shout in its celestial breezes, and sit upon its gentle slopes, and 
seize its tireless, endless prospects, it shall be a home to us as 
solid in its structure and as rooted in its base as it is lofty in its 
grandeur and eternal in its ages, and we shall find in the resti- 
tution of all things the restoration of every hallowed tie, the 
plenitude of every sacred fellowship, the reward of every Chris- 
tian love. Sometimes after long absence, and the vicissitudes 
of years, we return once again, and perhaps once for all, to an 
earthly homestead, where the silver locks are whiter and the 
golden ringlets flash with sunnier hues, and while that tremu- 
lous voice quavers in the blessing cry of humble supplication, 
blended with a tone of patriarchal majesty, and while soft eyes 
melt, and eagle eyes glitter at the board, and hearts surcharged 
vent fitfully, the only sadness steals in sweetness from a portrait 
on the mantel, the only sigh broods an instant over some grave, 
imprisoning a form that should have throbbed at our side. 
That is a touching hour. But there comes a day alike of nobler 
thanksgiving and of sweeter feasting, a scene of richer rapture 
and of brighter brilliance, a home where there shall be no child 
far away in heaven, and no parent tottering thither — a home 
where heaven shall bring its company, and shed its glory, and 
lift its psalm, and strike its harp. And we shall talk with those 
whose talk was joy, and sing with those with whom we sang 
God's praise. — H. S. Carpenter. 

HEAVEN AS A HOME. 

The saints will be blessed with a delightful sense of home. Home 
is the dearest spot on earth, the scene of our purest enjoyments. 
But oh, how precarious are all its pleasures and endearments in 
such a world as this! How few, comparatively, are favored 



520 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



with a genuine home ! The greater part of mankind are wan- 
derers, sojourners, tenants at will. And this is the lot of God's 
dear children as well as others. But even at best an earthly 
home fails to satisfy the innate longing of the soul. The Creator 
has placed within us aspirations which conform to a nobler, 
happier destiny. Those who are "made heirs of God according 
to the hope of eternal life," are sensible of this, and cheerfully 
acquiesce in the thought that they have here " no certain dwell- 
ing place," nor perfect objects of affection, while they look upward 
with joyful anticipations to their future heavenly home. And 
these hopes will not be disappointed when Christ shall take his 
elect to himself, when they shall receive their inheritance in his 
everlasting kingdom and dwell in the blest mansions prepared 
for them. Kings' palaces are but temporary, comfortless booths 
compared with the " everlasting habitations " into which they 
will be received; and the sweetest domestic enjoyments are 
scarcely a foretaste of the blessedness of those heavenly con- 
nections and associations amid which they will dwell. There 
will be no precariousness, or imperfection, attendant upon that 
blissful home. In it the feeble earthly foretaste will be ex- 
changed for complete fruition. The soul's indefinite longing 
will be satisfied, its ideal realized. Home with God, with loved 
ones, among kindred spirits loving and beloved, and in the 
midst of all things lovely — what more could be desired ? 

— E. Adkins, D. D. 

OTHER FIGURES OF HEAVEN. 

It is held forth to our view as a banquet, where our souls shall 
be satisfied forevermore; the beauties of Jehovah's face, the mys- 
teries of divine grace, the riches of redeeming love, communion 
with God and the Lamb, fellowship with the infinite Father, Son 
and Holy Ghost, being the heavenly fulness on which we shall 
feed. As a paradise — a garden of fruits and flowers, on which 
our spiritual natures and gracious tastes will be regaled. As an 
inheritance ; but there an inheritance that is incorruptible, unde- 
fined, and that fadcth not away. As a kingdom, whose immuni- 
ties, felicities and glories are splendid and vast, permanent and 



BEA UMONT—SA URIN. 



521 



real, quite overwhelming, indeed, to our present feeble imagin- 
ings. As a palace, where dwells the Lord our righteousness, 
the King in his beauty displayed — his beauty of holiest love ; in 
the eternal sunshine of whose countenance bask and exult the 
host that worship at his feet. As a building that has God for 
its Maker, immortality for its walls, and eternity for its day. As 
a sanctuary, where the thrice-holy divinity enshrined in our 
nature in the person of Immanuel is worshipped and adored, 
without a sigh, without an imperfection, and without intermis- 
sion ; where hymns of praise, hallelujahs of salvation, and 
hosannahs of redemption, uttered by blest voices without num- 
ber, ever sound before the throne. As a temple, bright with the 
divine glory, filled with the divine presence, streaming with 
divine beauty, and peopled with shining monuments of divine 
goodness, mercy and grace. — Dr. Joseph Beaumont. 

FUTURE GLORIES SURPASS ALL PRESENT EXCELLENCIES. 

You often hear us declaim on the nothingness of earthly 
things; we frequently diminish the worth of all that is great and 
glorious; we cry, with Solomon, " Vanity of vanities, all is 
vanity:" vanity in pleasures, vanity in grandeurs, vanity in 
riches, vanity in science, vanity in all. But yet how substantial 
would this vanity be — how amiable would this nothingness ap- 
pear — if, by a happy assemblage of all that the world hath of the 
beautiful, we could acquire the reality of a life, of which it is 
easy to form to one's self the idea ! Could I extract the choicest 
dignities and fortunes ; could I inhabit the most temperate clime 
and the most pleasant country; could I choose the most benevo- 
lent hearts and the wisest minds; could I take the most happy 
temper and the most sublime genius; could I cultivate the sci- 
ences and make the fine arts flourish ; could I collect and unite 
all that could please the passions, and banish all that could give 
pain: a life formed on this plan, how likely to please us! How 
is it that God, who hath resolved to render us one day happy, 
doth not allow us to continue in this world, and content him- 
self with uniting all these happy circumstances in our favor ? 
It is good to be here : O that he would allow us here to build 



522 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



our tabernacles, Matt. xvii. 4. Ah ! a life formed on this pla 
might indeed answer the ideas of happiness which feeble an4 
finite geniuses form : but such a plan cannot even approach the 
designs of an infinite God. A life formed on this plan might 
indeed exhaust a terrestrial love, but it could never reach the 
love of an infinite God. No, all the charms of this society, of 
this fortune, and of this life; no, all the softness of these climates 
and of these countries; no, all the benevolence of these hearts 
and all the friendship of these minds; no, all the happiness of 
this temper and all the sublimity of this genius; no, all the 
secret of the sciences and all the discoveries of the fine arts ; all 
the attractions of these societies and all the pleasures of the 
passions, have nothing which approaches the love of God in 
Christ Jesus. To accomplish this love there must be another 
world; there must be new heavens, and a new earth; there must 
be objects far more grand. — James Saurin. 

THE SUPERIOR GLORY. 

It is to such a destiny that human beings are invited freely, 
It is to the substance, of which all earthly good is but a hint. 
It is to the glory, of which all beauty here is but a shadow. It 
is to a joy, of which all sordid joy is but a mockery, all human 
joy is but a dream. It is to a rest, of which all rest below is 
but a glimmer. It is to jxiusic, of which all melody upon these 
ears, all melody within these hearts, is but a fluttering cadence, 
a mournful stanza, dying on the wind — a faltering echo in the 
barren rocks. It is to a home, of which all earthly homes are 
only canvas daubs and tantalizing touches. It is to a day for 
which all other days were made. It is to a Sabbath, of which 
the balmiest Sabbath is an emblenf, a fragrance spent upon the 
air. It is to a city, to which the grandeur of all earthly cities is 
as the glow of cinders in an ashy heap. It is to a liberty, a fran- 
chise, before which all citizenship on earth is bondage and a 
dungeon doom. It is to a worship, of which all other worship 
is but as the chattering of parrots, chattering human speech. It 
is to a life, for which all other life is but a bubble breath, a fleet- 
cng sigh. It is to God's own house. The dim, dusk ore which 



CARPENTER— POTTS. 



523 



we call terrestrial life and time — was one vast mine, minted and 
refined at last, in transparent gold of glory. — H. S. Carpenter. 

PERSONAL THOUGHTS OF HEAVEN. 

It is sometimes affirmed that everybody expects to enter 
heaven at last. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, es- 
pecially the hope of somehow and at some time gaining an 
admission into Paradise. Even the worn-out veteran of iniquity 
will not yield the point that, like the dying thief, he may be 
remembered in the hour of dissolution by the merciful Saviour. 
It would be well for such to examine the ground of their expec- 
tation ere the period of their probation ends, and they lift up 
their eyes on the nether side of the impassable gulf. God is 
merciful, but his mercy would better be displayed in protecting 
his saints from the approach of anything that defileth, than in 
admitting to the purity and joy of heaven those characters 
which on earth persisted in open rebellion against his will, and 
in positive acts and conditions of wickedness. The Scriptures 
plainly and repeatedly unfold the purpose of the Deity against 
the workers of iniquity. 

But what are the popular ideas of heaven that a desire to enter 
its pearly portals should become so general, even with the 
wicked? Usually the mind pictures heaven to be the direct 
opposite of all that is personally obnoxious on earth, and the 
completion and consummation of all that is personally gratify- 
ing and delightful. This means very different things to different 
persons. One finds on earth special satisfaction in the pursuit 
of knowledge. His heaven is therefore to be one of intellectual 
advancement to all eternity. Another experiences the highest 
joy in the contemplation of the beautiful in nature and art. To 
that mind heaven is a magnificent city, with flowing fountains, 
gorgeous temples, cosy bowers, rippling streams and blooming 
gardens. Another never reaches the acme of earthly bliss until 
the soul is constantly pouring forth its notes in the melody of 
song. Heaven to such an one is a grand musical organization, 
with perfectly trained choirs, golden harps, tireless voices and 
divinest harmony. Another still is not content without as a 



524 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



traveller flying hither and yon, from country to country and 
from shore to shore, over the continents and seas of earth. The 
world of light stands out in the visions of that mind as bound- 
less in its extent, endless in the variety of its glories, and limit- 
less in its facilities for transportation and comfort And so on 
to the end of human organization and tastes. Perhaps every 
pure conjecture of the character of heaven will be more than 
fulfilled in the actual realization, but it should be remembered 
that " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered 
into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for 
them that love him." 

A greater number might agree as to what is not in heaven 
than as to what is. Poets have sung and divines have pro- 
claimed the negative attractions of the upper world until the 
impressions in that particular are complete. Thus Samuel 
Stennett sang : 

" No chilling winds, or poisonous breath, 
Can reach that healthful shore ; 
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death, 
Are felt and feared no more." 

So Philip Doddridge expressed it in his immortal lines : 

" No more fatigue, no more distress, 
Nor sin, nor hell shall reach the place; 
No sighs shall mingle with the songs 
Which warble from immortal tongues. 

" No rude alarms of raging foes, 
No cares to break the long repose, 
No midnight shade, no clouded sun, 
But sacred, high, eternal noon." 

Thousands of people have looked forward to heaven with fond 
anticipations of being free from some terrible malady or misfor- 
tune that had fastened itself upon them and rendered their lives 
a burden. Thus Jessie Glenn, while mourning over the terrible 
calamity of blindness, expected deliverance bye-and-bye : 

" Then is there no joy for the sightless one ? Say, 
Must the beauties of earth all unseen pass away? 



y h. potts. 525 

Then I will up to a bright world above, 
Where all shall be happy and peaceful in love, 
And there from this darkness my eyes shall be free, 
For then I shall see ! I shall see ! " 

Not less touchingly did James Montgomery refer to what is 
to many a voiceless and silent world : 

" The song of birds, the water's fall, 
Sweet tones and grating jars, 
Hail, tempest, wind and thunder, all 
Are silent as the stars. 



Yet hath my heart an inward ear, 
Through which its powers rejoice; 

Speak, Lord, and let me love to hear 
Thy Spirit's still, small voice. 

So when the archangel from the ground 
Shall summon great and small, 

The ear now deaf shall hear that sound, 
And answer to that call." 



There is another idea of heaven, comforting to a still greater 
number. It has been observed by Young: 

" Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene ; 
Resumes them to prepare us for the next." 

It is difficult for the sorrowing spirits of this weeping world 
to count it only a minor joy of heaven that they are to be re- 
united with the dear ones long since gone. The devoted Bishop 
Gilbert Haven fondly anticipated a renewed companionship 
with her who had been a constant presence in his soul, though 
for fourteen years she had also been a presence among the 
angels of God. Once in the company of a few choice friends, 
he said : " I would willingly start and make a pilgrimage around 
the earth on foot to spend one hour with my Mary." And 
when he knew he was about to die, he said, as if overwhelmed 
by the weary labors and journeyings through which and over 
which he had dragged himself, in spite of sickness and sorrow 
and pain, for all these long, lonesome years : "After I have seen 



$ 2 6 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

the Lord, I shall want to rest for the first thousand years with 
my head in the lap of my Mary." 

There are mothers whose hearts have been wrung with an- 
guish again and again, as the tender plants God had given them 
for brief nourishment were torn from their convulsive grasp. 
Will it be a slight thrill of gladness these mothers shall feel 
when they clasp to their breasts once more the glorified spirits 
of their long mourned children, knowing that death shall never* 
more divide them asunder ? Southey thought not : 

" O ! when a mother meets on high 
The babe she lost in infancy, 
Hath she not then for pains and fears, 

The day of woe, the watchful night — 
For all her sorrows, all her tears, 

An over-payment of delight? " 

Certainly the blissful gratulations of heaven's redeemed is a 
matter which well may stir the ardor of human thought. The 
prospect is balm to the wounded heart and support to the sink- 
ing spirit. 

" Blest hour when righteous souls shall meet — 

Shall meet to part no more ; 
And with celestial welcome greet 

On an immortal shore ! 
Each tender tie dissolved with pain, 

"With endless bliss is crowned; 
All that was dead revives again, 

All that was lost is found." 

Turning to inspired examples for personal ideas of heaven, 
what do we find ? There was David, whose heart was attuned 
to the divine symphony, and whose psaltery was awake to sacred 
melodies. Looking forward to the future, when his own frail 
and troubled life should terminate, and when his voice and his 
harp should join in the celestial lays, he lifted his soul to God 
and exclaimed : " Thou wilt show me the way of life : in thy 
presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures 
for evermore." 

There was Peter, ardent, bold, impulsive, devoted Peter ; he 



J. H. POTTS. 527 

had forsaken all, and had followed Christ. Under the strength- 
ening influence of the Divine baptism he had wrought nobly for 
his Lord. His was a genuine sacrifice ; business, pleasure, life, 
all, were in that offering. Contemplating the end of earth's 
transitory things, and the beginning of heaven's permanent pos- 
sessions, what else could he do but bless his God, who, accord- 
ing to" his abundant, mercy, had begotten him again unto " a 
lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to 
an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not 
away, reserved in heaven " for himself and all who are kept 
through faith unto salvation. 

There was Paul. He had the courage of opinion. He dared 
to express his convictions in the face of friend or foe. Grand, 
courageous, persecuted, triumphant, humble Paul. His epistles 
are read in all the churches ; his instructions have enlightened 
mankind ; his appeals have moved the world. What does he 
think about heaven ? Oh, how sublime was that conception of 
the future which enabled him to declare, after labors more abun- 
dant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in 
deaths oft; thrice beaten with rods, once stoned, thrice ship- 
wrecked, a night and a day in the deep; in journeyings often, in 
perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by his own coun- 
trymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils 
in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false 
brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in 
hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness, bear- 
ing continual cares; after all these experiences, how sublime, we 
say, must have been his conception of the future, to say, " For I 
reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to 
be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us; " and 
again, " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I 
have kept the faith : henceforth there is laid up for me a crown 
of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall 
give me at that day : and not to me only, but unto all them that 
love his appearing." 

And then there was John, the loving and tender apostle, the 
majestic and inspired seer. Time would fail to express his 



,j 2 8 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

glorious views of heaven, for to his vision the veil was lifted, 
and he saw the city itself descending down from God, prepared 
as a bride adorned for her husband, having the glory of God 
and the light of eternity flashing from gate to gate across the 
streets of purest gold as it were transparent glass. 

But there is one thought expressed by John so characteristic 
of his sweetness of spirit and purity of imagination that it may 
be accepted as his own idea of the glory world. One of the 
elders stood with him on the heavenly hill and inquired, "What 
are these which are arrayed in white robes ? and whence came 
they?" John answered, "Sir, thou knowest." And he said, 
" These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have 
washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the 
Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve 
him day and night in his temple : and he that sitteth on the 
throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, 
neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor 
any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne 
shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of 
waters : and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 

No wonder that redeemed humanity longs for the coming of 
such a kingdom. No wonder that the tired ones of earth would 
fain escape the turmoils and strifes of this dark world and bask 
in the radiance of the eternal throne. Valuable and delightful 
as are many of the things of time and sense, they do not always 
satisfy even the common aspirations of men. By a thousand 
tokens they declare plainly that they seek a better country, that 
is an heavenly. And God has prepared it for them. The walls 
of their everlasting habitation gleam in splendor before the eye 
of faith. Like a city set on a hill, which cannot be hid, its 
portals are full in view. 

"All hail, ye fair celestial shores ! 
Ye lands of endless day ! 
Swift on my view your prospect pours, 
And drives my grief away." 

— The Editor. 




5'Come UNTO Me." 



CLARK— SIMPSON. ^ 

TO BE WITH CHRIST. 

Let us enter the privileged chamber where the saint of God, 
after a long and glorious warfare, struggles in the last dread 
conflict. His breathing is short and difficult; his pulse flut- 
tering and failing ; cold drops of sweat stand upon his marble 
brow ; receding life leaves the pallor of death upon his counte- 
nance ; his friends give utterance to their sorrow in the gush of 
falling tears, or in that anguish that is too deep for tears. An- 
other step, and the transit of the cold Jordan of Death will be 
complete. Life is fast going out, but the beaming eye speaks 
of heavenly support. Just then he struggles for utterance, and 
is heard to exclaim, with faltering speech, " Having a desire to 
depart and be with Christ ! " A moment more, and all is over! 
The weary wheels of life have ceased to move ! all is still ! The 
body is no longer the home of the spirit! it is. motionless and 
dead ! Where has that spirit gone ? What is its state now? 
What now has become of that hope of passing through the 
agonies of death to the glorious presence of Christ, and to the 
blissful vision of heaven ? Has it been realized, or has it been 
blighted forever ? What saint of God, who has been sustained 
in a dying hour, has not fixed his eye upon this one glorious 
hope — that of dying and being with Christ? Such seems to 
have been the views of the first martyr when he cried, " Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit." 

" One gentle sigh their fetter breaks ; 
We scarce can say, ' They're gone ! ' 
Before the willing spirit takes 
Her mansion near the throne." 

—Bishop D. W. Clark, D. D. 

TO BE LIKE CHRIST. 

A likeness to Christ consists in its perfection in various ele- 
ments. We are assured that we shall have a physical likeness. 
He shall change our vile bodies into the likeness of his glorious 
body. We are to bear, even on our redeemed and purified hu- 
manity, the likeness of our blessed Saviour. Death shall corne 
upon our friends ; they shall be " sown in corruption," but they 
34 



53<D REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

shall be "raised in incorruption ; " they shall be "sown in 
mortality," they shall be " raised in immortality." Christ has 
ascended to the right hand of the Father, the first-fruits of them 
that slept ; he has gone up before the throne to carry our human- 
ity with him. He came with his divinity to earth ; he took our 
humanity, and though that humanity died and was laid in the 
grave, it rose again. In his divine power he has ascended tri- 
umphant to the right hand of the Father ; and there, as the 
first ripening heads of grain in the commencement of harvest 
were laid up at the temple, so Christ hath taken up even his 
human body, and it is the pledge of our glorious resurrection. 
We shall bear his image. 

And has it occurred to you that the type of the Christian, the 
resurrected Christian, is to be that of full maturity and vigor — 
not of infancy nor of old age ? Christ was taken away in the 
prime of life, in the vigor of humanity, in the fulness of his 
strength, and his glorified body is to be the likeness of ours. 
" We shall be like him ; " not these wrinkles on our brows ; not 
this stoop in our frame; not these gray hairs upon our heads; 
not these marks of disease and imperfection ; but we shall be 
in all the vigor and in all the strength of a glorious youth of 
immortality. 

But the likeness is not to be merely physical. Thought, mind, 
are far superior to matter,"and the likeness, in part, of the glory- 
crowned is to be an intellectual likeness. Comprehending the 
thoughts of Christ, and his great plans over the universe for its 
control, its government, its grand changes, we shall recognize 
such a beauty, such a propriety, such a grandeur, that our souls 
shall drink in the likeness of his plans, and we shall become 
like Christ mentally, because his thoughts shall captivate our 
thoughts : we shall see that they are the grandest thoughts that 
could possibly be conceived ; and we shall mount up into an 
elevated position. Our nature shall become thus like Christ's 
nature. What more could man ask ? When we are bowed 
with sorrows and our hearts are pressed down with care, when 
these frames of ours are sinking with disease, when we see loved 
ones fading like the early flower, and when we bear our kindred 



SIMPSON— FO WLER. 



531 



to the tomb, let us cherish these thoughts of revelation, that they 
and we shall be like Christ. Standing by the verge of the tomb, 
so cold and so dark, think not merely of the dust which 
crumbles, think not merely of the worm that riots, think not 
merely of that dark and narrow prison-house, but think of the 
morning of the resurrection, when these friends of ours shall 
shine in the likeness of Jesus. — Bishop Simpson, LL. D. 

TO KNOW AS WE ARE KNOWN. 

" Now we know in part, but then shall I know even as also I 
am known." In another line of thought we know only in part 
the work and movement of his providence. I cannot tell you 
why it is that that little child in that home of luxury and com- 
fort, with all the advantages of Christian culture, trained to be 
a child of God, with all the chances of education, with every- 
thing to make its promises for the future large, is smitten and 
carried away, while that one having an inheritance of shame, 
degradation and crime, should grow up to make society tremble, 
and increase the burden and the weight of the world's sin. I 
cannot tell you why it is, because I see such a small part of it. 
I do not know why it is that that boy whose heart is fixed on 
doing God's will, who is determined, if possible, to take hold of 
men, even at the bottom of society, and lift them up into the 
light and comfort of God, and into fellowship with him, should 
be touched in his sight and slip out into the darkness to be a 
burden to his friends, while that boy who uses his sight only for 
purposes of evil, who uses his eyes only to plan the destruction 
of the innocent and unwary, is permitted to live and see his way 
to destruction. I cannot comprehend it at all; I may find it out 
by and by, as I understand this way ; I shall know by and by 
something about this. I may find out that we cannot weave a 
garment and not have the threads touch each other ; I may find 
out that we cannot perpetuate the race without keeping in all 
the links in the chain. I may find out that God purposed that 
that boy in the alley should have the largest chance from his 
start ; that, by looking into the face of some Christian man, and 
by hearing his voice from the pulpit, and the word out of his 



532 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

book, he must have some chance of getting a home yonder. It 
may all come clear in what I call now " the mystery of my free- 
dom ; " but this I do know, that somehow, some time, by and 
by, I shall know. 

We cannot see the significance of many things that happen in 
this life. It was a dark day for you when he took that little 
lamb out of your arms where it was warm, and put her away in 
the cold earth. You could not understand it at all ; she was so 
gentle and full of smiles and tenderness ; she was unto you all 
in all. You know how you trembled and quaked when she 
grew thin ; you thought you would never see the sunshine 
again. When you put her in the silent house, away in the dark- 
ness, you did not understand it, and do not understand it to- 
day. It may be you have carried that little grave these many 
years ; it is a sad fact in your experience, but you shall know 
by and by. Oh ! sometimes it seems a weary, worn way ! We 
go along heavy paths ; we carry hard loads and stagger under 
them, and one after another falls ; we see ourselves left alone 
with nobody in the universe but God. We think it strange ; we 
take a little more hope and gird ourselves for the race. But 
know this, even though we run in the darkness, we shall see 
and we shall know even as we are known. Time hacks out our 
frames ; we grow gray, and thin, and wrinkled ; we wonder how 
those who went away when we were young and in the vigor of 
our early manhood will ever know us, what changes will come 
over them, and how we shall see them, but we shall know even 
as we are known. — Bislwp C. H. Fowler, D. D., LL.D. 

THE JOYS OF HEAVEN. 

Death may separate the believer from some object that he 
loves, but it draws him nearer to the object he mainly loves. It 
is, indeed, delightful for the believer to think that the friend who 
first visited him in his lost estate, and who cherished him all the 
way through the wilderness, is the very friend whom he is to 
meet in the mansion above. Death does no violence to such a 
man ; it produces no break in his feelings or affections. Led to 
love the Lamb of God when on earth ; trained by the Spirit of 



PRESIDENT JAMES McCOSH, D. D. 533 

God and by all the dispensations of God to love him more and 
more, he finds when he has entered the dark valley and the 
shadows of death that the first object that meets his eye, and the 
most conspicuous object, is a lamb as it had been slain. 

We cannot speak of that which is unspeakable, or delineate 
that which is indescribable, and therefore we cannot delineate 
that joy unspeakable and full of glory which the believer will 
enjoy throughout all eternity. The word of God does not fur- 
nish us with any particular account of the holy exercises and 
joys of heaven. Two very excellent reasons can be given for 
this : One is that a vivid description of the joys of heaven as 
fascinating the fancy might rather draw away the mind from the 
practical duties of life; and the other is that the joys of heaven 
are such that man in his present state cannot so much as con- 
ceive them. Enough is revealed of them, however, that the 
Lamb is slain to be the grand source of the joys of the saints. 
There will be joys springing from the holy affections, confidence 
and love, which Christ by his spirit has planted in the breasts 
of his people. The grace flowing and overflowing and increas- 
ing will be a source of great and ever-augmented happiness 
throughout eternity. Again, there will be joys springing from 
the glorious society of heaven, from the company of saints and 
angels. Brethren in Christ, you are even now walking on the 
very road on which all the men of God have travelled from 
creation downwards, and at its termination you shall meet with 
all those who come from the east, the west, north and south, to sit 
down in the kingdom of God. They are one of many kindred, 
but they all unite with melody of voice and heart to sing praises 
to the Redeemer. Out of every people, but now all kings and 
priests, reigning under God and his anointed! Out of every 
nation, but now all brought together in the heavenly Canaan ! 
Here you will meet with all the great and good, who shall have 
lived from the time of creation downwards. The patriarchs and 
prophets converse face to face with God, not in clouds or dark- 
ness, but in the sunshine of the better land. There the sweet 
psalmist of Israel is one of the choir of the redeemed, and joins 
his harp with the harp of angels. The apostles are there, and 



534 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



the disciples of love may lean on the bosom of Jesus and look 
up to him and behold his glorification and in very truth see the 
Lamb as it had been slain in the very midst of the throne of 
God. Ye will be in the heavenly Jerusalem in company with 
Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and his saints. 

— Preside?it James McCosh, D. D. y LL. D. 



How will the heavens echo of joy when the bride, the Lamb's 

wife, shall come to dwell with her husband forever ! 

— John Bunyan. 
GOOD WORKS OF HEAVEN. 

There are good works in heaven, and far more and better 
than on earth. There will be more life and power for action ; 
more love to God and one another, to excite to action ; more 
likeness to God and Christ in doing good, as well as being 
good ; more union with the beneficent Jesus, to make us also 
beneficent ; and more communion, by each contributing to the 
welfare of the whole, and sharing in their common returns to 
God. What the heavenly works are, we must perfectly know 
when we come thither. We shall join with the whole society, 
as Scripture particularly describes, in giving thanks and praise 
to God and our Redeemer. All passions earnestly desire to be 
freely exercised, especially our holy affections of love, joy, 
and admiration of Almighty God. In expressing such affec- 
tions, we naturally desire communion with many. Methinks 
when we are singing the praises of God in great assemblies with 
joyful and fervent spirits, we have the liveliest foretaste of 
heaven upon earth, and could almost wish that our voices were 
loud enough to reach through all the world, and to heaven 
itself. Nor could I ever be offended with the sober and season- 
able use of instrumental music, to help to tune my soul in so 
holy a work, in which no true assistance is to be despised. 
Nothing comforts me more in my greatest sufferings, nor seems 
more fit for me, while I wait for death, than singing psalms of 
praise to God ; nor is there any exercise in which I would 
rather end my life. Should I not, then, be willing to go to the 
heavenly choir, where God is praised with perfect love, and joy, 



BAXTER— MAHAN. 



535 



and harmony? Lord, tune my soul to thy praises now, that 
sweet experience may make me long to be where I shall do it 
better. — Ricliard Baxter. 

EMPLOYMENTS OF HEAVEN. 

The reader will recollect certain expressions occurring in the 
parable of the talents, Matt, xxv., which have an important 
bearing on this point, and which are repeated so often and in 
such connections as authorize us to regard them as general 
principles in the government of God. When he who received 
five talents came and brought other five talents which he had 
gained besides them, his Lord said to him, " Well done, thou 
good and faithful servant, thou hast been faithful over a few 
things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into 
the joy of thy Lord." Thou hast been faithful here on a small 
scale of trust ; I will give thee higher responsibilities and more 
abundant joy hereafter. I will make thee ruler over many 
things. Thy trustworthiness shall be amply rewarded. A nobler 
sphere of labor and of honor is before thee. 

Compare with this another passage, Rev. iii. 21 : "To him 
that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even 
as I also overcame, and am sit down with my Father in his 
throne." The Bible often alludes to the fact that Christ is glo 
riously exalted on account of his obedience unto death, and his 
voluntary humiliation for and in the work of human redemption. 
He fought a glorious fight on earth, and rose to his ineffable 
reward : he now promises the same reward to all who follow in 
his footsteps. Amazing, incredible though it be, he speaks of 
taking them to sit with himself on his own throne of glory! 
This must mean something; and though it does not yet appear 
in all points what it does mean, yet none can doubt that it 
speaks of glory and honor immortal, far too exalted for the com^ 
prehension of mortal thought. These are some of the intima-* 
tions which Scripture gives on this subject. 

We said there were also some probabilities as to the future 
condition of the saints, which are derivable from known facts in 
Jehovah's kingdom. It is not probable that such mental and 



536 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



moral powers as our Creator has given us will lie inactive 
through eternity. The most sublime feature in the human 
mind is its law of unlimited progression. Place it under circum- 
stances favorable for development, and there is no limit to its 
onward progress. Verily, such minds were made for heaven — 
made for a sphere where God is to be known — where we come 
into perfect sympathy with the Infinite Mind, and where both 
mental and moral powers will be eternally active, and where 
consequently such attainments as angels make will be our per- 
fect blessedness. 

Again, it is not probable that in such a universe as this there 
can be any lack of ample field for effort. God has not thrown 
worlds and systems of worlds from his creative hand, peopling 
universal space with material globes for nothing. Those twink- 
ling points of light have some other object than to excite the 
wonder or task the science of mortals on earth. We cannot 
doubt that God has peopled them all with sentient beings, and 
probably most, if not all, with beings of intelligence. If so, 
there is ample enough space in this universe of God for eternal 
study, even though our minds are eternally progressing in ca- 
pacity, and forever enjoy the mental and moral vigor of an 
archangel. It is not probable that, launched abroad upon such 
a universe, there will be any lack of created things, the study of 
which will forever reveal more and more of God : nor will there 
be any lack of intelligent beings with whom we may have the 
sweet intercourse of mind with mind and heart with heart. 

Again, it is not probable, considering the cost, so to speak, 
of the arrangements and provisions for the redemption of the 
race, that God will suffer the whole scheme to go into oblivion 
in his kingdom, or to be confined in its influence to an insignifi- 
cant portion of his universal empire. It cannot be that he will 
fail to make the most of it for the well-being of the moral uni- 
verse. Indeed we are told that "we are a spectacle to angels; " 
that they sung the birth-day song of human salvation; that they 
strike a fresh note over every fresh convert; minister to each 
heir of salvation through his earthly toils and trials; blend their 
voices in the mighty paean of universal praise to God and to the 



MAHAN—FARNINGHAM. 



537 



Lamb that was slain, forever and forever : — how then can we 
doubt that they will catch the story of redemption in all its 
thrilling details from the lips of redeemed saints, and help to 
bear it far away and away to the remotest provinces of Jehovah's 
empire. It is not on earth alone that we have missionary work 
to do. The next great commission will' be — Go ye through all 
this outspreading, far-reaching universe, and preach the glad 
tidings to every creature. Tell them for their joy what infinite 
love has done. Tell them how God's own dear Son was given 
up ; came down from his co-equal throne to earth ; allied him- 
self to mortal flesh ; endured reproach and death from those he 
would save ; tell them the whole story of the cross ; lay open 
the scenes of Calvary, and then disclose the scheme of God's 
providential agency and of his spiritual agency to turn from sin 
to holiness a countless people to the praise of his grace ; let 
each saint tell his own story and show how God followed him 
with mercies, converted him by his power, and then kept him 
through faith unto salvation ; go, you have enough to say ; tes- 
tify to those minds in that far-off world, that they may learn 
more of their own Maker and Father." Such may be a part 
of the employments of the heavenly world. 

— President Asa Mahan, D. D. 

THEY PRAISE HIM DAY AND NIGHT. 

They are perfectly blest — the redeemed and the free — 
Who are resting in joy by the smooth glassy sea ; 
They breathed here on earth all their sorrowful sighs, 
And Jesus has kissed all the tears from their eyes. 

They are happy at home ! They have learnt the new soag, 
And warble it sweetly amid the glad throng; 
No faltering voices, no discords are there — 
The melodious praises swell high through the air. 

There falls not on them the deep silence of night ; 
They never grow weary — ne'er fadeth the light ; 
Throughout the long day new hosannahs they raise, 
And express their glad thoughts in exuberant praise. 



538 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

E'en thus would we praise thee, dear Saviour divine — 
We too would be with thee — loved children of thine ; 
O teach us, that we may sing perfectly there 
When we too are called to that city so fair. 

— Marianne F<+rmngham. 

A PICTURE OF RAVISHING BEAUTY. 

To my own mind, when I look in the direction of the future, 
©ne picture always rises — a picture of ravishing beauty. Its 
essence I believe to be true. Its accidents will be more glorious 
than all that my imagination puts into it. It is that of a soul 
forever growing in knowledge, in love, in holy endeavor ; that 
of a vast community of spirits, moving along a pathway of light, 
of ever-expanding excellence and glory; brightening as they 
ascend; becoming more and more like the unpicturable pattern 
of infinite perfection ; loving with an ever-deepening love; glow- 
ing with an ever-increasing fervor ; rejoicing in ever-advancing 
knowledge ; growing in glory and power. They are all immor- 
tal. There are no failures or reverses to any of them. Ages 
fly away ; they soar on with tireless wing. ^Eons and cycles 
advance toward them and retire behind them ; still they soar, 
and shout, and unfold ! 

I am one of that immortal host. Death cannot destroy me. 
I shall live when stars grow dim with age. The advancing and 
retreating aeons shall not fade my immortal youth. Thou, 
Gabriel, that standest near the throne, bright with a brightness 
that dazzles my earth-born vision, rich with the experience of 
uncounted ages, first-born of the sons of God, noblest of the 
archangelic retinue, far on I shall stand where thou standest 
now, rich with an equal experience, great with an equal growth; 
thou wilt have passed on, and, from higher summits, wilt gaze 
back on a still more glorious progress ! 

Beyond the grave ! As the vision rises how this side dwindles 
into nothing — a speck — a moment — and its glory and pomp 
shrink up into the trinkets and baubles that amuse an infant 
for a day. Only those things, in the glory of this light, which 
lay hold of immortality seem to have any value. The treasures 
that consume away or burn up with this perishing world are not 



FOSTER— GRIFFEN— THOMAS. 5 39 

treasures. Those only that we carry beyond are worth the 
saving. — Bishop R. S. Foster, D. D., LL. D. 

MEASURELESS AGES. 

This life is but the threshold of our existence — a breath ; we 
gasp once here and live forever ; if we owned the whole world 
it could not attend us a step beyond the grave ; but if we once 
obtain the heavenly inheritance, we shall carry it with us down 
through the revolving ages of eternity. If want and affliction 
beset us here, death will soon close the distress ; but if we lose 
our soul the loss will be forever. This is that last death which 
death itself cannot destroy. The fashion of this world passes 
away ; the earth will soon grow crazy with age ; the sun itself 
shall wax dim in its orbit; the stars shall fall like the leaves 
of autumn ; but the deathless soul shall survive the wreck of 
worlds. And when another period, as long as the world's age, 
shall have passed, and as many such periods as there were mo- 
ments in the first, the soul will have just begun its course. To 
stand on some eminence like Pisgah and look away into eternity, 
O what a prospect rushes on the eye ! Let imagination spread 
all her pinions and swiftly pursue the flying soul, through ages 
of joy enough to dissolve mortal flesh — and keep on wing and 
still pursue, through periods which human numbers cannot cal- 
culate, until the fancy has got so far from home as hardly to be 
recalled — it must still return and leaving the flying soul to ex- 
plore ages after ages — a boundless eternity of inexpressible bliss. 
And when it returns to earth, how it sickens at worldly glory,, 
and calls mortal life a blank, a point, no time at all. 

—E. D. Griff en, D. D. 

TIME ENOUGH IN HEAVEN. 

Anything less than eternity would make being but a mockery 
to man, a curse instead of a blessing ; for I honestly say to you 
that if there be no eternity, in which these souls can expand and 
live on, better, better would it be never to have been. If the 
problem were put to me to-night to die now forever, or to live 
five hundred years and then die with no hereafter, I would say, 



540 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

let me go now. If there be no eternity, life is a vain mockery, 
a delusion which had better never have been. But with eternity, 
with bodies strong and healthful forever, with every sense acute 
and trained, with minds open to knowledge from every source, 
and hearts free to the sweet impulse of love — then the blessed 
thought of time enough will be with us forever. You do not 
know how much meaning there is to me in that thought. How 
many things we would gladly undertake, but we have not time. 
I would like to travel, but I haven't the time. I would like to 
sail, not only on the Hudson but on the Nile, not only on the 
lakes of our own country, but on the oceans of the earth ; I 
haven't time. I would like to study the musty records of Egypt 
and Babylon, but I haven't time. I would like to study so many 
things, but there isn't time. There is time enough over there. 
I would like to give a few hundred years to botany, and win the 
love of every tree and flower upon the earth. I would like to 
study for a few thousand years in the strange and accurate com- 
binations of numbers. I would like to read history, beginning 
back in the far-off past when the hieroglyphs of Egypt were 
written. I would like to read everything that has ever been 
written or spoken by the great thinkers of earth. I would like 
to give thousands of years to music. I would like to make the 
acquaintance of every soul in this city, in this State, and in this 
vast country. I, haven't time. But there is time enough there, 
and I am looking for the day when you and I will gather on 
the other shore, no longer feeling that it is twelve o'clock or 
one o'clock, that the sun is sinking, we must hurry home. We 
shall not feel that we have only a few more years, but we shall 
wake up in the fair morning of eternity feeling that a youth of 
endless years is ours. Then we shall begin to plan and work 
forever; then we shall sit down by the rippling stream and talk 
till the heart is satisfied ; wander through groves of stately trees 
and by paths strewn with flowers ; listen to sweet voices as they 
may come to sing from other planets, till the heart is satisfied. 
Time enough for every study, every journey, every love. What 
learning man may gather in the endless beyond — what friend- 
ships he may have — what a traveler he may be — what a singer, 



THOMAS- HA VERGAL. 



54* 



what a reasoner, what a philosopher, may the years of endiesi 
experience develop ! 0, summer-land of the soul ! land of 
beauty, land of flowers, land of love ! Often when the soul is 
weary here, when the shadows are deepening, when the grass 
grows above the graves of loved ones, do we think of thy far-off 
shores, and glad will be the day when the angels shall open the 
gate for us to enter in. God grant, my friends, that this hope 
of a future world may be yours and mine. God grant that we 
may listen to sweeter music than we have heard here, know a 
deeper joy, a dearer truth, and live in a holier love in the long 
forever. — H. W. Thomas, D. D. 

THE LULL OF ETERNITY. 

Many a voice has echoed the cry for a " lull in life,' 
Fainting under the noontide, fainting under the strife 
Is it the wisest longing, is it the truest gain ? 
Ss not the Master withholding possible loss and pain I 

Perhaps if He sent the lull we might fail of our heart's desire, 
Swift and sharp the concussion striking out living fire : 
Mighty and long the friction resulting in living glow, 
Heat that is force of the Spirit, energy fruitful in flow. 

What if the blast should falter — what if the fire be stilled? 
What if the molten metal cool ere the mold be filled ? 
What if the hands hang down when a work is almost done ? 
What if the sword be dropped when a battle is almost won ? 

Past many an unseen Maelstrom the strong wind drives the skiff, 
When a lull might drift it onward to fatal swirl or cliff; 
Faithful the guide who spurreth, sternly forbidding repose, 
When treacherous slumber lureth to pause amid Alpine snows. 

The lull of time may be darkness, falling in lonely night, 
But the lull of eternity neareth, rising in full, calm light; 
The earthly lull may be silence, desolate, deep and cold, 
But the heavenly lull shall be music, sweeter a thousandfold. 

Here, it is " calling apart," and ihe plage may be desert indeeu, 
Leaving and losing the blessings linked with our busy need ; 
There ! why should I say it i Hath not the heart leapt up, 
Swift and glad, to the contrast, filing the full, full cup ? 



ij42 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Still shall the key-word ringing echo the same sweet " Come ! " 
" Come," with the blessed myriads safe in the Father's home ; 
" Come," for the work is over : " Come," for the feast is spread' 
" Come," for the crown of glory waits for the weary head. 

When the rest of faith is ended, and the rest of hope is past, 
The rest of love remaineth, Sabbath of life at last. 
No more fleeting hours, hurrying down the day, 
But golden stillness of glory, never to pass away. 

Time, with its pressure of moments, mocking us as they fell, 
With relentless beat of a footstep hour by hour the knell 
Of a hope or an aspiration, then shall have passed away, 
Leaving a grand, calm leisure — leisure of endless day. 

Leisure that cannot be dimmed by the touch of time or place; 
Finding its counterpart measure only in infinite space ; 
Full, and yet ever filling; leisure without alloy; 
Eternity's seal on the limitless charter of heavenly joy. 

Leisure to fathom the fathomless, leisure to seek and to know 
Marvels and secrets and glories Eternity only can show ; 
Leisure of holiest gladness, leisure of holiest love, 
Leisure to drink from the Fountain of infinite peace above. 

Art thou patiently toiling, waiting the Master's will, 
For a rest that seems never nearer, a hush that is far off still ? 
Does it seem that the noisy city never will let thee hear 
The sound of His gentle footsteps, drawing, it may be, near? 

Does it seem that the blinding dazzle of noonday glare and heat 
Is a fiery vail between thy heart and visions high and sweet ? 
What though a " lull in life " may never be made for thee ! 
Soon shall "a better thing" be thine — the lull of Eternity. 

— Francis Ridley HavergaL 

IMMORTAL YOUTH. 

There is an idea that goes with us in all our wanderings, 
and which casts a soft radiance around our minds — I refer to 
the idea of an eternal youth. The thought is beautiful, and the 
very sound of it is exceedingly pleasant. We keep repeating 
the words — keep listening — thinking — cherishing as it were the 
prolonged echo of a hymn sung by the angels. The idea 
awakens in us a sigh for a loftier realm, and for a purer region 
than is found here. It may seem strange that there is not a 



REID—SrRA G UE. 



543 



passage in any part of the Bible that gives us a direct statement 
touching an immortal youth. It is only indirectly, by way of 
inference, that we catch the thought. The angels who were 
seen at the sepulchre of Christ were called young men. They 
appeared as such ; yet thousands of years had passed away since 
their creation. The glorified bodies of the saints must always 
have the freshness of youth about them from the fact that they 
are never to show any signs of decay — they are to be immortal 
bodies. We never could think of the divine man as appearing 
old. Young comparatively he was when he ascended to heaven, 
and young he will be forever. Eternal youth will mark all his 
followers. . . . When we stand far up on the mountain 
summits of heaven, close beside God, we shall be young. . . . 
It has been said that to " want a star is the beautiful insanity of 
the young." That insanity clings to us all. The aged man 
and the child, the good and the bad, the sick and the well, all 
want a star. We sigh for a day that is brighter than any we 
have seen, for a home that has in it no evil of any kind, for 
eternal vigor and youth amidst the heights and glories of the 
Lord. — Rev. John Reid. 

IMMORTAL STRENGTH. 

At the threshold of eternity the Christian will drop this weak, 
corruptible and inglorious body, and ere long will receive in its 
place a body endued with undecaying vigor, and clothed with 
unfading beauty; a body which may mock at the power of 
death, and which can move as if upon the lightning to execute 
God's high commissions in other worlds. And the intellect — 
oh, how it will brighten and expand ; how it will rise to that 
which is lofty, and sink into that which is profound, and never 
tire either in the sublimity of its excursions or the depth of its 
researches ! And the moral faculties — with what incalculable 
energy will they operate when God's Spirit has given them a 
perfect direction, and there is all the beauty and glory of the 
third heavens to call them into exercise ! Is it not reasonable 
that the Christian should hail the day when he shall be taken up 
to that region of immortal strength ? 



544 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

I would not live alway, because I do not wish always to be 
an heir to these clustering infirmities of immortality. I would 
bear patiently the pains, the groans, the tossings, to which this 
poor body is subjected ; but I would rather be beyond their 
reach,- and wear a body that could bid defiance to disease ; that 
could shine with an angel's beauty and move with an angel's 
strength. I would not complain of the feebleness of my mental 
operations; and yet I would hail with gratitude the expansion 
of these powers into something yet greater and brighter; I would 
prefer the noble thoughts of glorified manhood, to the narrow 
conceptions of this infancy of my existence. I would be thank- 
ful for what God has made me, and humble for what I have 
made myself; but I would wait in exulting hope of a complete 
renovation of my nature, in which I shall have strength imparted 
to me to bear an eternal weight of glory. 

— William B. Sprague, D. D. 

ETERNAL LOVE. 

The mutual love of souls is eternal, like the souls them- 
selves ; eternal, like God and his love. It is true, all earthly 
ties are dissolved between the living and the departed spirits, 
but our spiritual brotherhood in God continues, and God is the 
Father of all. In the better world we shall all be equal, as the 
angels and the higher powers and forces in the creation are 
equal. 

That which belongs to the body dies with the body. The 
spiritual alone endures. The power, the faculty of growing in 
perfection alone continues. Our relations must be of a different 
nature in heaven to what they are on earth, for they must be 
purified and spiritualized ; but how we cannot imagine. The 
occupations of the blessed spirits in the next world we are 
equally incapable of conceiving. Most assuredly they are neither 
the same as on earth, nor similar to them ; and everything 
that has been said on the subject by presumptuous men is 
nothing more than idle dreams. We know not how the spirit 
works in a disembodied state, nor do we know how, when by 
the almighty power of God it is clothed in more beautiful rai- 



ZSCl/t 'KKE— SPENCER. 



545 



ment, it will act through this. For who knows the power of 
God ? But this much we do know, and a thrill of happiness 
passes through the longing soul at the thought : the loved ones 
who died here on earth still live in a more exalted state. That 
which has once been present is still present in the universe, and 
that which has once lived, still lives. For " God is not the God 
of the dead, but of the living." — Zschokke. 



MANY MANSIONS. 

Jesus said, " In my Father's house are many mansions." It is 
thought by some that he alludes to the various apartments in 
the temple, and the vast number of people that lodged there. 
Perhaps the allusion, in a more general sense, may be to the 
palaces of kings, and the various apartments which they con- 
tained for the accommodation of the domestics and the numer- 
ous persons belonging to the royal court. The original term 
here used, literally translated, signifies quiet and continued 
abodes. Our Saviour intends to afford encouragement and 
comfort to his disciples, by assuring them that, in the place to 
which he was going before them, there was ample room to re- 
ceive them, and everything prepared to accommodate them in 
the most delightful manner. 

These " many mansions " are doubtless designed to teach us 
that in heaven there is sufficient room for the millions of re- 
deemed and blood-washed spirits who shall finally inherit that 
happy place as their everlasting home. So ample is that place, 
so numerous are those mansions, that no faithful soul will lack 
for room, or want any of the accommodations necessary to ren- 
der his happiness complete. All will find mansions there pre- 
pared for their reception ; none will be left to wander homeless 
and destitute. The people of God, while in this world, are many 
of them afflicted and poor, and, like their divine Master, have 
not any place to lay their head which they can call their own ; 
but in heaven it will not be so. Poor as they may have been in 
this world, in the heavenly mansions, in their Father's house, 
35 



546 REWARD OR THE RIGHTEOUS. 

they will have a splendid dwelling, and everything that their 
hearts can desire. They belong to the royal family of the King 
of kings, and they will finally inhabit the many mansions of the 
heavenly palace, and enjoy all the riches, the glory, and the 
bliss of their delightful abode. 

" Large are the mansions in thy Father's dwelling, 
Glad are the homes that sorrows never dim ; 
Sweet are the harps in holy music swelling, 

Soft are the tones that raise the heavenly hymn." 

— James Spencer, M.A. 

Think of heaven with hearty purposes and pre-emptory dc 
signs to get thither. — Jeremy Taylor. 

A PROGRESSIVE LIFE. 

The soul will have a progressive life there. This is its pres- 
ent nature. Begin with it as you find in the infant, and watch it 
until it attains the power and brilliancy of a Newton's or 
Shakespeare's, and have you not sufficient evidence that it is a 
progressive entity? It will continue thus. 

There will, however, be one striking difference between its 
progress here and its progress on the higher fields of its en- 
deavors. While here it encounters many things which check it 
in its outfoldings ; hereafter it will be free from such bafflements, 
be enabled to achieve more rapid advancement and more bril- 
liant. Here it is tempted to sin ; there it will not be, for the 
centre of temptation is in the material nature, and that is to be 
discarded. When temptation ceases sin must cease. 

The future life may be represented as an inclined plane, on 
whose radiant surface all souls shall ascend farther and farther 
as eternity rolls along its immense cycles. Over it will hang 
the holy, genial, inspiring presence of God, across it float winds 
freighted with heaven's aromas, into its meandering avenues fall 
the light of the Infinite Love, and out of its crystal fountains 
gush waters of rarest sweetness. No tear of grief shall fall on 
its fadeless flowers, no word of unkindness disturb its placid air, 
no sighs of suffering blend with its seraphic music, and no dis- 
cord sweep in midst its blessed harmonies. 



REV. D. M. RE ID— J. R. McDUFF> D.D. 547 

" We speak of the realms of the blest, 
Of that country so bright and so fair; 
And oft are its glories confessed, 
But what must it be to be there ? 

" We speak of its pathways of gold, 

And its walls decked with jewels most rare, 
Of its wonders and pleasures untold, 
But what must it be to be there ? 

" We speak of its service of love, 

Of the robes which the glorified wear, 
Of the church of the first-born above; 
But what must it be to be there ? 

"Then let us, 'midst pleasure and woe, 
Still for that sphere our spirits prepare ; 
And shortly we also shall know 
And feel what it is to be there." 

—Rev. D. M. Reid. 
DEGREES OF GLORY. 

There are to be different degrees of bliss in a future heaven. 
One star is to differ from another star in glory. There are to be 
rulers over five, and rulers over ten cities — those who are to be 
in the outskirts of glory, and those basking in the sunlight of 
the Eternal Throne ! Is this no call on us to be up and doing ? 
— not to be content with the circumference, but to seek nearness 
to the glorious centre — not only to have crowns shining as the 
brightness of the firmament, but to have a tiara of stars in that 
crown? It is the degree of -holiness now that will decide the 
degree of happiness then — the transactions of time will regulate 
:he awards of eternity.— J. R. McDitff, D. D. 

SHAPING THE FUTURE. 

We shape ourselves the joy or fear 

Of which the coming life is made, 
And fill our future's atmosphere 

With sunshine or with shade. 

The tissue of the life to be 

We weave with colors all our own, 
And in the field of destiny 

"We reap as we have sown. 



$48 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Still shall the soul around it call 

The shadows which it gathered here, 

And, painted on the eternal wall, 
The past shall reappear. 

Think ye the notes of holy song 
On Milton's tuneful ear have died? 

Think ye that Raphael's angel throng 
Has vanished from his side ? 

Oh, no ! we live our life again ; 

Or warmly touched, or coldly dim, 
The pictures of the past remain — 

Man's works shall follow him. — John G. Whitiier. 



Heaven is viewed not only as a retreat from pain, and sin, 
and death, but as the consummation of eternal felicity. In this 
world our joys are transient and precarious; but in heaven there 
is fulness of joy; and at God's right hand, where Christ reigns, 
are pleasures forevermore. The vast capacity of the soul is 
filled with the emanations of God. His perfections, shining in 
all the radiance of the divine nature, overshadow and delight the 
soul ; and the unfolding of his eternal providence and grace 
shall be a source of pleasure always pure, always new, and 
grateful to the high circles of celestial society. What, then, are 
all our trials, if God shall count us worthy to behold his face in 
^righteousness ? — Joseph Sutcliffe, A.M. 

ETERNAL PROGRESSION. 

It is so difficult to conceive of one's living forever in heaven 
without acquiring any new ideas, or any deeper impressions 
from ideas already received, that it is generally believed that 
holy creatures will forever grow in capacity and enjoyment. 
And there are certainly passages of Scripture which favor this 
opinion. I shall venture no assertion on this point; but, taking 
the thing for granted at present, what an august being will a 
human soul become! Observe its progress in the present life, 
and the dignity which it here accumulates. Yesterday it was a 



EDWARD D. GRIFFIN, D.D. 



549 



babe, weeping in its mother's arms; to-day it is a child, and we 
chide it; to-morrow it is a philosopher, and we revere him. Let 
this progress be extended to a million of years, and how great 
has that creature become ! A thousand times more difference 
between him and a Newton, than between Newton and an in- 
fant. Mark that miniature of man just opening its eyes on the 
light ; yet that minim of being contains a soul which will one 
day outstrip the ranges of the widest imagination. That spark 
will grow to the flame of a seraph ; that thinking thing will fly 
through heaven. 

Observe that poor Christian, doomed to hard labor, covered 
with sweat and dust. The world sweeps by him without deem- 
ing him worthy of a look, and considers him only an animal. 
Yet that same poor man will soon be greater than a nation com- 
bined. While carrying burdens on his bending shoulders (ye 
know him not), he is an angel in disguise : the reverse of the 
stage, where a poor man acts the king, but, passing behind the 
curtain, dwindles to a pauper; for here a king acts the pauper, 
and as soon as the curtain falls, ascends the throne. See that 
mingled throng in the streets, fluttering about like insects in the 
summer's sun — the reputed creatures of a day. How little is it 
considered that every one of that number, and of those human 
shapes in the filthy dungeon, is destined to eternal progression, 
and will one day be greater than kings in glory, or equally great 
in misery. Fix your eyes a little upon that throng, and silently 
mark whither they will go when they disperse. I follow one 
with my eyes to his secret apartment ; I see the shiverings of 
death stealing upon him; the tears of mourners fill the room; 
the soul bursts its cerement, and is an angel now: wings are 
lent it, and I trace it soaring through the regions of light. I 
follow it in its course of endless progress until it has become 
greater than Gabriel was. I pursue it till it has become greater 
than the whole human race were in this infant world — till it has 
become greater than all the angels together were when it left 
the body; and I leave it still progressing towards God, approxi- 
mating towards his infinite dimensions — a point at an immeas- 
urable distance, but at which it is eternally stretching away. 
We are lost, we are swallowed up in the boundless prospect. 



550 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Upon the principle of eternal progression (however slow that 
progression may be), these are the destinies of the feeblest soul 
that ever enters heaven. — Edward D. Griffin, D. D. 



Look above thee — never eye 

Saw such pleasures as await thee ; 
Thought ne'er reached such scenes of joy 

As are there prepared to meet thee ; 
Light undying, seraph's lyres, 
Angel welcomes, cherub choirs, 

Smiling through heaven's doors to greet thee. — Bowring. 

THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE. 

We exist here only in the small, that God may have us in a 
state of flexibility, and bend or fashion us, at the best advan- 
tage, to the model of his own great life and character. And 
most of us, therefore, have scarcely a conception of the exceed- 
ing weight of glory to be comprehended in our existence. If 
we take, for example, the faculty of memory, how very obvious 
is it that, as we pass eternally on, we shall have more and more 
to remember, and finally shall have gathered more into this 
great storehouse of the soul than is now contained in all the 
libraries of the world. And there is not one of our faculties 
that has not, in its volume, a similar power of expansion. In- 
deed, if it were not so, the memory would finally overflow and 
drown all our other faculties, and the spirits, instead of being 
powers, would virtually cease to be anything more than registers 
of the past. 

But we are obliged to take our conclusion by inference. We 
can see for ourselves that the associations of the mind, which 
are a great part of its riches, must be increasing in number and 
variety forever, stimulating thought by multiplying its sugges.. 
tives, and beautifying thought by weaving into it the colors of 
sentiment endlessly varied. 

The imagination is gathering in its images and kindling its 
eternal fires in the same manner. Having passed through many 
trains of worlds, mixing with scenes, societies, orders of intel- 
ligence and powers of beatitude — just that which made the 
apostle in Patmos into a poet by the visions of a single day — 



HORACE BUSHNELL, D.D. 551 

it is impossible that every soul should not finally become filled 
with a glorious and powerful imagery, and be waked to a won- 
derfully creative energy. 

By the supposition it is another incident of this power of end- 
less life, that, passing down the eternal galleries of fact and event, 
it must be forever having new cognitions and accumulating new 
premises. By its own contacts it will, at some future time, have 
touched even whole worlds and felt them through, and made 
premises of all there is in them. It will know God by experi- 
ences correspondingly enlarged, and itself by a consciousness 
correspondingly illuminated. Having gathered in, at last, such 
worlds of premises, it is difficult for us now to conceive the 
vigor into which a soul may come, or the volume it may exhibit, 
the wonderful depth and scope of its judgments, its rapidity and 
certainty, and the vastness of its generalizations. It passes over 
more and more, and that necessarily, from the condition of a 
creature gathering up premises, into the condition of God, creat- 
ing out of premises ; for if it is not actually set to the creation 
of worlds, its very thoughts will be a discoursing in world-prob- 
lems and theories equally vast in their complications. 

In the same manner, the executive energy of the will, the vol- 
ume of the benevolent affections, and all the active powers, will 
be showing, more and more impressively, what it is to be a power 
of endless life. They that have been swift in doing God's will 
and fulfilling his mighty errands, will acquire a marvellous ad- 
dress and energy in the use of their powers. They that have 
taken worlds into their love will have a love correspondingly 
capacious, whereupon also it will be seen that their will is settled 
in firmness and raised in majesty according to the vastness of 
impulse there is in the love behind it. They that have great 
thoughts, too, will be able to manage great causes, and they 
that are lubricated eternally in the joys that feed their activity 
will never tire. What force, then, must be finally developed in 
what now appears to be the tenuous and fickle impulse, and the 
merely frictional activity of a human soul? 

On this subject the Scriptures indulge in no declamation, but 
only speak in hints, and start us off by questions, well under- 



CC2 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

standing that the utmost they can do is to waken in us the sense 
of a future scale of being unimaginable, and beyond the com- 
pass of our definite thought. Here they drive us out in the 
almost cold mathematical question, " What shall it profit a man 
to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" Here they 
show us, in John's vision, Moses and Elijah, as angels, suggest- 
ing our future classification among angels, which are sometimes 
called chariots of God, to indicate their excelling strength and 
swiftness in careering through his empire to do his will. Here 
they speak of powers unimaginable as regards the volume of 
their personality, calling them dominions, thrones, principalities, 
powers, and appear to set us on a footing with these dim majes- 
ties. Here they notify us that it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be. Here they call us sons of God. Here they bolt upon 
us, but " I said, Ye are gods ; " as if meaning to waken us by a 
shock ! In these and all ways possible, they contrive to start 
some better perception in us of ourselves, and of the immense 
significance of the soul ; forbidding us always to be the dull 
mediocrities into which, under the stupor of our unbelief, we 
are commonly so ready to subside. Oh, if we could tear aside 
the veil, and see for but one hour what it signifies to be a soul 
in the power of an endless life, what a revelation would it be ! 

— Horace BushnelL D. D. 



Remember what peace with God in Christ, and the presence 

of the Son of God, will be to you when eternity shall put time 

to the door, and ye shall take good-night of time, and this 

little shepherd's tent of clay, this inn of borrowed earth. 

— Rutherford. 
RULE OF RANK IN HEAVEN. 

What then, we may ask, shall be the rule of rank or order in 
that invisible world ? What the law of relative position ? Shall 
an arbitrary or an accidental location be admitted, or shall there 
be an invariable prevalence of some principle, founded upon the 
reason of things, and the qualities of the subject ? The latter, 
does it not seem the preferable supposition ? 

Absolute uniformity takes place . . . where one or two 



TA YLOR— BAXTER. 



553 



causes operate upon a simple and single substance. Now if there 
be truth in this maxim, then it would seem more than barely 
probable that, in the region to which souls are consigned (those 
denuded rudiments of life), each spirit shall fall into its rank, as 
if in obedience to the law of its actual affinity with the divine 
nature. Or as if the concentric circles of worship that embrace 
the tabernacle of glory should determine the position of all 
spirits, according to the rule of love and purity. How many 
those circles may be, or how vast the space they enclose, we 
know not. Perhaps the disparity in light and joy between the 
inner circles, and the remotest orbits, may be immense. These 
matters are all beyond surmise. Meanwhile, and until truth 
and knowledge burst upon us, we may each revert to the secresy 
of the soul ; and each may ask how such a law of rank as we 
have imagined would affect his particular case? Or whether 
the habits of the mind, its ordinary and characteristic emotions, 
would bring it near to the Majesty in the heavens, or remove 
it to the very verge of joy and hope. — Isaac Taylor. 

THE CONDITION OF REWARD. 

As the life of adult age depends upon infancy ; or the reward 
upon the work ; or the prize of racers or soldiers upon their 
running or fighting ; or the merchant's gain upon his voyage : 
so the life to come depends upon this present life. Heaven is 
won or lost on earth ; the possession is there, but the prepara- 
tion is here. Christ will judge all men in another state, as their 
works have been in this. First, " Well done, good and faithful 
servant;" then, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." "I 
have fought a good fight, I have finished my course," — must go 
before the crown of righteousness " which the Lord, the right- 
eous Judge, shall give." All that we ever do for salvation must 
be done here. It was on earth that Christ himself wrought the 
work of our redemption, and here also must we do our part. 
The bestowing of the reward is God's work, who, we are sure, 
will never fail. So that if we will make sure of heaven, it must 
be by " giving all diligence to make our calling and election 
sure " upon earth. If we fear hell, we must fear our being pre- 



554 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



pared only for it. And it is great and difficult work we have t<& 
do upon earth ; as for instance, to be cured of all damning sin ; to 
be born again ; to be pardoned and justified by faith ; to be 
united to Christ, made wise to salvation, renewed by the Spirit, 
and conformed to his likeness ; to overcome all the temptations 
of the world, the flesh and the devil ; to perform all the duties 
toward God and man, that must be rewarded ; <( with the heart 
to believe in Christ unto righteousness," and with the mouth to 
make confession unto salvation ; also to suffer with Christ, that 
we may reign with him ; and to be faithful unto death, that we 
may receive the crown of life. Thus on earth must we so run 
that we may obtain. — Richard Baxter, D. D. 

POSITIVE REWARDS. 

Besides being exempt from all earthly trials, and having a 
continuance of that happiness which we had begun to enjoy 
even here, we have good reason to expect hereafter other re- 
wards and joys, which stand in no natural or necessary connec- 
tion with the present life; for our entire felicity would be ex- 
tremely defective and scanty were it to be confined merely to 
that which we carry with us from the present world, to that 
peace and joy of soul which result from reflecting on what we 
may have done which is good and pleasing in the sight of God, 
since even the best men will "always discover great imperfections 
in all that they have done. Our felicity would also be incom- 
plete were we compelled to stop short with that meagre and 
elementary knowledge which we take with us from this world — 
that knowledge so broken up into fragments, and yielding so 
little fruit, and which, poor as it is, many good men, from lack 
of opportunity, and without any fault on their part, never here 
acquire. Besides the natural rewards of goodness, there must 
therefore be others which are positive, and dependent on the will 
of the supreme Legislator. 

On this point almost all philosophers are, for the above reasons, 
agreed — even those who will admit of no positive punishments 
in the world to come. But for want of accurate knowledge of 
the state of things in the future world, we can say nothing defi- 



M' CLINTOCK—STR ONG—DASHIEL. 



555 



nite and certain as to the nature of the positive rewards. In 

the doctrine of the New Testament, however, positive rewards 

are considered most obviously as belonging to our future felicity, 

and as constituting a principal part of it ; for it always represents 

the joys of heaven as resulting strictly from the favor of God, 

and as being undeserved by those on whom they are bestowed. 

Hence there must be something more added to the natural 

good consequences of our actions here performed. — M' Clintock 

and Strong. 

THE GROUND OF REWARD. 

The distribution of earthly trusts is a little different, perhaps, 
from our idea of what it ought to be. In the first place, they 
are unequal as to the amount entrusted. One man receives one, 
another two, and another man five, and blessed is that man who 
is not offended at this distribution. We sometimes become 
offended at God in this distribution. Then they are various as 
to kind. He gives one man wealth, but not much personal in- 
fluence ; he gives another man personal influence, and not much 
wealth ; he gives one man business tact, constituting a great 
power ; he gives another man gifts in prayer and exhortation ; 
he gives another a gentle, persuasive, winning manner, quietly 
reaching the hearts of the people and bringing them to Jesus ; 
he gives another man the gift of utterance, with power to con- 
vince the reason, to arouse the conscience, and to move the 
hearts of the people to decision upon great moral ideas by the 
force of truth. He makes one man a son of thunder, and with 
the thunder of God's word, gleaming with the lightning of the 
Spirit, he comes crushing down amid the formalities and hypoc- 
risies of earth like a storm in the forest. There is variety as 
well as inequality in the distribution of the trusts of men. Is 
this inequality the result of an unjust favoritism ? No, no i It 
is justified and vindicated by two considerations. To every one 
according to his several ability ; not according to the ability he 
thinks he* has, but according to the ability that God knows he 
has. To every one according to his several ability, because it is 
accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to 
that he hath not. 



556 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Up to that point it seems clear; but, then, how about the 
reward ? If a man has one talent, will he have the same reward 
as a man who has five talents ? That can be answered in two 
ways. I want to answer it in the affirmative. I call your atten- 
tion to this fact, that in the story of the talents, the man who 
came with two talents, and found other two talents which he had 
made, received just as hearty a welcome as the man who brought 
five talents with precisely the same words. Now, I conclude 
from this that it is not according to the largeness of the sphere 
in which a man moves, not according to the splendor and great- 
ness of his talents, that he is to be rewarded hereafter, but 
according to the industry and fidelity with which he administers 
the trust, whether it be a large one or whether it be a small one. 
My eye has rested, within a few days, as I addressed a little 
country Sabbath-school, upon a tender, delicate female member 
of the church, sitting at the head of a little class of six girls, 
faithfully and industriously teaching those children the way of 
life. She, if faithful to that trust within that small sphere of life, 
will wear as bright a crown and receive as hearty a welcome as 
the minister who has swept a continent by his influence and 
power ; and for this simple reason, that it is not according to 
the number of talents that God commits to us, but according to 
the fidelity and the industry with which we administer the 
talents, whether it be one or" whether it be two, or whether it 
be five. 

The covenant between God and man in this distribution of 
trusts is sealed on this wise : he requires absolutely for all that 
he commits to us. Oh! I do not realize that, now that I have 
said it, I do not realize it in my own soul, you do not realize it 
— you think you do — that God absolutely requires of us that we 
give an account for all that he has committed to us — every dol- 
lar, every talent, every personal influence, every moment, every 
influence, conscious and unconscious — absolutely requires us to 
give an account for all. I sometimes think we have very loose 
notions about the judgment day. We think it is all a figure 
about opening the books. I hear men talk lightly of going to 
judgment. My brethren, when I remember (and God help me 



DASHIEL—MAR VIN—NE VINS. 



557 



to r: member it every day of my life more and more) that God 
absolutely holds me responsible for everything that he has 
committed to me, whether temporal, spiritual, or intellectual, I 
tremble for myself, I tremble for my brethren, I tremble for the 
church of God. — R. L. Dashiel, D. D. 

THE LOSS OF OUR WORK. 

He who trifles with the "truth as it is in Jesus," does so at 
his peril. He who is careless with respect to any truth con- 
nected with the doctrine of Christ, however remotely, will be so 
at heavy cost. For he who loses his work in eternity, though 
he himself be saved, will doubtless find it a great loss. It will 
be an eternal loss. The man whose work abides will find it to 
enter in the most vital way into his fortunes in the eternal 
wor\d.^£ishop E. M. Marvin, D. D. 

WHAT IS NOT IN HEAVEN. 

There is no night there. Who does not want to go where no 
night is ? No night, no natural night — none of its darkness, its 
damps, its dreariness; and no moral night — no ignorance, no 
error, no misery, no sin. These all belong to the night ; and 
there is no night in heaven. And why no night there ? What 
shines there so perpetually? It is not any natural luminary. It 
is a moral radiance that lights up heaven. "The glory of God 
doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." No need 
have they there of other light. This shines everywhere, and on 
all. All light is sweet, but no light is like this. 

And not only no night there, " but no more curse." Christ 
redeemed them from the curse of the law, being made a curse 
for them. And " no more death!' The last enemy is overcome 
at last. Each, as he enters the place, shouts victoriously, " O 
death, O grave ! " " Neither sorrow!' It is here. O yes, it is 
here — around, within. We hear it; we see it; and at length we 
feel it. But it is not there. "Nor crying" — no expression of 
grief. " Neither shall there be any more pain!' And what be- 
comes of tears ? Are they left to dry up ? Nay, God wipes 
them away. And this is a sure sign they never return. What 



558 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



shall cause weeping when he wipes away tears ? " The former 
things are passed away." 

I have not said that there is no sin in heaven. I have not 
thought that necessary. If sin was there, night would be there, 
and the curse, and death, and all the other evils — the train of 
sin. These are not there ; therefore sin is not. No, " we shaU 
be like him ; for we shall see him as he is." 

— Rev. W. Nevins, D. D. 

NO LAMENTATIONS. 

In heaven there will be no regret for the past any more than 
for the present. Now we review our lives with a disapprobation 
which causes grief. However we may disapprove, in heaven 
there can be no grief. 

Our past sorrows will not seem too many or too severe. We 
shall feel that we never suffered a pang too much. Whether it 
arose from repentance or from providence, whether it was seated 
in the body or in the soul, we shall feel that every pang came in 
the right form, at the right time, and in the right measure ; that 
it was neither too light nor too heavy, too early nor too late. 
Every sigh, and tear, and groan, every deprivation and every 
persecution, will then be recollected with inconceivable gratifi- 
cation, and will provoke our complacency and gratitude. 

Now, if our living is taken away or our honor is tarnished, if 
our health is impaired, or our friends fade and die, we are ready 
to exclaim against Providence, or to wither in silent despair. 
But the saints will remember and review such afflictions with 
unspeakable satisfaction. 

In that blessed world the sins of this life will inflict upon the 
soul neither remorse nor repentance. Here gracious hearts are 
filled with godly sorrow at the remembrance of transgression 
and the remains of carnal appetite. But the hearts of the glori- 
fied will not lament. The just made perfect will feel no re- 
pentance, and the sanctified and spotless will have no carnal 
tempers. Now sin provokes in the believers self-reproach and 
indignation. Such cannot forgive themselves, even when God 
forgives them. They abhor-themselves like Job, and repent as 



HAM LINE— WA TSON. 



559 



in sackcloth. Their penitence is not distrustful and death- 
working, like the sinner's, but still it is penitence; and they are 
unwilling to part from it all the days of their life. The happiest 
hours of the best Christians are softened by this penitence. 
They may have ascended the mount of regeneration, the mount 
of faith, the mount of love; but on the loftiest summit they shall 
find no soil barren of repentance, no region so clear and lofty as 
never to see a cloud, or feel the refreshing moisture of its gently 
falling showers. Our earthly graces are moral buds and blos- 
soms. They are most beautiful and fragrant when watered with 
drops of generous sorrow. When these buds of grace become 
the ripened fruits of glory, they can endure perpetual sunshine 
There they will be garnered in a tearless heaven. 

Not even sin in its recollections will afflict the sainted spirit. 
It had a sting on earth which cannot reach to heaven. The 
saved will not love sin. They will abhor it most intensely, but 
it will have no power to inflict pain or unpleasant regret on the 
redeemed and glorified. Sin purged away by the blood of the 
Lamb will be as though it had not been. The restitution 
of the soul to its original innocence and purity will be complete. 
Consider how much rapture must arise from perfect self- 
complacency ! — Bishop L. L. Hamline. 

HEAVENLY WORSHIP. 

Part of the felicity of the saints in heaven shall consist in the 
worship of God. 

And who would wish it otherwise ? Could we find a man 
who would exclude from his idea of this place of blessedness, the 
eternal, ceaseless worship of his God, I would deny to him all 
claim to a single ennobling thought : that by itself would prove 
his total want of preparation for the kingdom of God. But it is 
not so ; the tabernacle of God is with men, and to that they shall 
bring the homage of their hearts, and the tribute of their praises. 
So in the tabernacle of old: the sin-offerings, the peace-offerings, 
the thank-offerings, were all brought there ; and with a variety 
of instruments and voices the praises of God were there sung. 
There, especially, were sung the songs which the sweet psalmist 



560 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



received from the inspiring Spirit; songs, indeed, containing 
M thoughts that breathe and words that bum," and which to our 
own day retain all their animation and power. It was this 
which made David say, "A day in thy courts is better than a 
thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my 
God, than dwell in the tents of wickedness." And, when distant 
from it, he envied even the birds which found shelter in the 
sanctuary, were covered by its shadow and cheered by its 
sounds. And have we not felt the inspiration of worship our- 
selves ? Wherever God is devoutly adored, feelings at once the 
strongest and the richest are called forth, from 

" The speechless awe which dares not move, 
And all the silent heaven of love," 

to the thanksgivings which break from a heart overcharged with 
its grateful recollections. 

These are the feelings which are to be heightened and per- 
fected in heaven. The worship there shall be ceaseless and 
eternal ; and it is an interesting view of it, that it shall be all 
praise. No prayer shall be there, for there shall be no sense of 
want; all is praise, for all is manifestation and light; all is praise, 
for all is triumph ; all is praise, for all is blessedness and enjoy- 
ment. Whatever the feeling, praise, eternal praise, is the ex- 
pression of it, from the breathing whisper of adoring love which 
flits through the prostrate ranks of the redeemed, to the full 
chorus of praise, the high, the universal shout of glory, and 
honor, and blessing, to him that sitteth upon the throne, and to 
the Lamb forever. — Richard Watson. 



Perfect purity, fulness of joy, everlasting freedom, perfect 
rest, health and fruition, complete security, substantial and 
eternal good — such is heaven. — Hannah More. 

MARTYRS IN HEAVEN. 

Here pass the regiment of Christian martyrs. They endured 
all things for Christ. They were hounded ; they were sawn 
asunder ; they were hurled out of life. Here come the eighteen 




To the Realm op Light. 



T. DEW1TT TALMA GE, D. D. 5 6 1 

thousand Scotch Covenanters who perished in one persecution. 
Escaped from the clutches of Claverhouse, and bloody McKen- 
zie, and the horrors of the Grass-Market, they ride in the great 
battalion of Scotch martyrs, Hugh McKail, and James Renwick, 
and John Knox, and others whose words are a battle-shout for 
the church militant — men of high cheek bones, and strong arms, 
and consecrated spirits. Greyfriars churchyard took some of 
their bodies, but heaven took all their souls. They went on 
weary feet through the glens of Scotland in times of persecu- 
tion, and crawled up the crags on their hands and knees ; but 
now they follow the Christ for whom they fought and bled, on 
white horses of triumph. Ride on, ye conquerors ! Victors of 
Dunottar Castle, and Bass Rock, and Rutherglen ! Ride on ! 

Here comes the regiment of English martyrs. Queen Mary 
against King Jesus made an uneven fight. The twenty thousand 
chariots of God coming down the steep of heaven will ride over 
any foe. Queen Mary thought that by sword and fire she had 
driven Protestants down, but she only drove them up. Here 
they pass: Bishop Hooper, and Rogers, Prebendary of St. 
Paul's ; and Archbishop Cranmer, who got his courage back in 
time .to save his soul ; and Anne Askew, who, at twenty-five 
years of age, rather than forsake her God, submitted first to the 
rack without a groan, and then went with bones so dislocated 
she must be carried on a chair to the stake, her last words 
rising through the flames being a prayer for her murderers. O 
cavalcade of men and women, whom God snatched up from the 
iron fingers of torture into eternal life ! Ride on, thou glorious 
regiment of English martyrs ! 

Look at this advancing host of a hundred thousand. Who 
are they? Look upon the flag, and upon their uniform, and tell 
us. They are the Protestants who fell on St. Bartholomew's 
Day in Paris, in Lyons, in Orleans, in Bordeaux, while the king 
looked out of the window and cried, " Kill ! Kill ! " Oh, what a 
night, followed by what a day! Who would think that these on 
white horses were tossed out of windows, and manacled, and 
torn, and dragged, and slain, until it seemed that the cause of 
God had perished, and cities were illuminated with infernal joy\ 
36 



C52 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

and the cannon of St. Angelo thundered the triumph of hell ! 
Their gashed and bespattered bodies were thrown into the 
Seine, but their souls went up out of a nation's shriek into the 
light of God; and now they pass along the boulevards of heaven. 

" Soldier of God, well done ! 
Rest be thy loved employ ; 
And while eternal ages run, 
Rest in thy Master's joy." 

Ride on, ye mounted troops of St. Bartholomew's Day! 

— T. Dewitt Talmage y D. D< 

AT EVENING TIME IT SHALL BE LIGHT. 

Pause, Christian pilgrim, journeying on 
Through life's long way of toil and pain ; 

Here is a staff to lean upon, 

And rest thy trembling wearied frame; 

'Twill prove thy comfort, thy delight — 

"At evening time it shall be light." 

Thy morning may be overcast — 

Clouds may obscure the brightest sky; 

The gathering storm may burst at last- 
But oh, take courage, God is nigh. 

His promise puts all fears to flight ! — ■ 

"At evening time it shall be light." 

No mid-day's surf may gild thy path, 

To cheer thee on thy journey home; 
Yet still rely, by precious faith, 

On Jesus Christ, and him alone. 
Then is his promise his delight — 
"At evening time it shall be light." 

Now art thou near thy journey's end ; 

A few more hours thy labor's done ; 
Oh, tarry not; ere long thou'lt find 

The battle fought, the victory won. 
Christian, thy prospects then are bright, 
"At evening time it shall be light." 

Dread not the valley thou may'st pass; 

Fear not, the conflict soon is o'er; 
Trust Him, he's faithful to the last, 

He'll lead thee to the happy shore. 



T. DEWITT TALMAGE, D. D. 563 

And thou shalt find, oh, welcome sight ! 
"At evening time it shall be light." 

Christian, now thy race is run — 

Thy heavenly Father calls thee home ; 
There shalt thou shine fair as the sun, 

Before the uncreated One. 
No morning cloud, nor sable night 
Is there, but everlasting light. 

FRIENDS IN HEAVEN. 

A living divine says : When I was a boy I thought of heaven 
as a great shining city, with vast walls, and domes, and spires, 
and with nobody in it except white angels, who were strangers 
to me. . By and by my little brother died, and I thought of a 
great city, with walls, and domes, and spires, and a flock of 
cold, unknown angels, and one little fellow that I was ac- 
quainted with. He was the only one I knew in it at that time. 
Then another brother died, and there were two that I knew. 
Then my acquaintances began to die, and the flock continually 
grew. But it was not until I had sent one of my little children 
to his Grandparent — God — that I began to think I had got a 
little in myself. A second went, a third went, a fourth went ; 
and by that time I had so many acquaintances in heaven that I 
did not see any more walls, and domes, and spires. I began to 
think of the residents of the celestial city. And now there have 
so many of my acquaintances gone there that it sometimes 
seems to me that I know more in heaven than I do on earth. 

THE FAMILIAR FACES. 

Dr. Talmage says of our departed friends in heaven : Many 
of those in the other galleries we have heard of; but these we 
knew. Oh, how familiar their faces ! They sat at our tables, 
and we walked to the house of God in company. Have they 
forgotten us? Those fathers and mothers started us on the 
road of life. Are they careless as to what becomes of us ? And 
those children : do they look on with stolid indifference as to 
whether we win or lose this battle for eternity? Nay; I see 
that child running its hand over your brow and saying, " Father, 



S64 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



do not fret;" "Mother, do not worry." They remember the 
day they left us. They remember the agony of the last farewell. 
Though years in heaven, they know our faces. They remember 
our sorrows. They speak our names. They watch this fight 
for heaven. Nay; I see them rise up and lean over, and wave 
before us their recognition and encouragement. That gallery is 
not full. They are keeping places for us. After we have slain 
the lion, they expect the King to call us, saying, " Come up 
higher!" Between the hot struggles in the arena I wipe the 
sweat from my brow, and stand on tip-toe, reaching up my right 
hand to clasp theirs in rapturous hand-shaking, while their 
voices come ringing down from the gallery, crying, " Be thou 
faithful unto death, and you shall have a crown! " 

THEY WAIT TO WELCOME US. 

Tell me, ye who have seen the open tomb receive into its 
bosom the sacred trust committed to its keeping — ye who have 
heard the sullen rumblings of the death-clods, as they dropped 
upon the coffin-lid, and told you that earth had gone back to 
earth — when the separation from the object of your love was 
realized in all the desolation of bereavement, next to the thought 
that you should ere long see Christ as he is, and be like him, 
was not that consolation tl^e strongest which assured you that 
the departed one, whom God has put from you into darkness, 
will run to meet you when you cross the threshold of immor- 
tality, and, with the holy rapture to which the redeemed alone 
can give utterance, lead you to the exalted Saviour, and with 
you bow down at his feet, and cast the conqueror's crown before 
him ? How sublime, how glorious these anticipations ! Based 
as they are on the eternal truth of God, and embodied in the 
elements of a holy Christian faith, they seem almost to rend in 
twain the curtain that hides the invisible world from us. 

— Dr. Berg. 

Oh, if the feeble and pining mother, who sees her long-gone 
sea-boy, all sunburnt and joyous, re-entering her desolate cot- 
tage, starts up with renewed vigor and rushes forward to fall on 



STOCKTON— ST. BERNARD— WESLEY. 



565 



his neck in all the ecstasy of sudden restoration, how will you 
thrill with a thousand richer transports, when your vision shall 
open on the glorified groups of your sainted ones in heaven, all 
hastening, in beauty and blessing beyond your hope, and with 
love more glowing, pure, and sweet than ever, to meet you at 
the gate, and guide and welcome you to your home in the City 
of God forever! — Stockton. 

STEPS IN THE WAY OF LIFE. 

The first step in the way of life is a right will ; the second, a 
strong will; the third, a devoted will; the fourth, a full will. 
In the first, the soul consenteth to the law of God, but, through 
weakness of the flesh, findeth not how to perform ; in the sec- 
ond, it performeth, although heavily, yet firmly; in the third, it 
"runneth the way of God's commandments," because " set at 
liberty; " in the fourth are angels only, who will and perform 
with equal ease, because unhindered by the body. 

— St. Bernard. 
THE JOURNEY TO ETERNITY. 

To candid, reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what 
have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I 
am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through 
the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God ; 
just hovering over the great gulf, till, a few moments hence, I 
am no more seen ! I drop into an unchangeable eternity ! I 
want to know one thing, the way to heaven ; how to land safe 
on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach 
the way; for this very end he came from heaven. He hath 
written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book ! At. any 
price, give me the book of God ! I have it ; here is knowledge 
enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri. Here then I am, 
far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone; only God is 
here. In his presence I open, I read this book — for this end to 
find the way to heaven. — John Wesley. 



^ 66 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

THE JOURNEY OF ETERNITY. 

It is a solemn thing to be always journeying, without a 
moment's cessation or rest, and at the same time to be moving 
on with great rapidity from our point of departure, without ever 
lessening, in the least, the distance between us and our point of 
destination. This is the journey of eternity. There is great 
rapidity in the revolution of the wheels of duration. Onward 
we are rolled with the most eager velocity. Each revolution 
tells with solemn interest upon the future before, without in the 
least lessening the distance in prospect. There are but two 
roads across the "undiscovered country" to which we must 
soon take our departure. On the one or the other of these we 
must journey through the endless cycles before us. On the one 
"our sun does not go down, neither does our moon withdraw 
itself. God is our everlasting light, and the days of our mourn- 
ing are ended," always in the focal centre of infinite light and 
love, with that blissful centre perpetually changing, only to en- 
large our sphere of vision and to increase our bliss. On the 
other we endlessly journey on " through the land of darkness, 
as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, 
and where the light is as darkness." And now, reader, we are 
shaping our course for this journey. As our course is across 
the track of time, such to us^will be the journey of eternity. 

"Jesus, vouchsafe a pitying ray, 
Be thou my guide, be thou my way 

To glorious happiness. 
Ah, write thy pardon on my heart, 
And whensoe'er I hence depart, 

Let me depart in peace." 

— Oberlin Evangelist. 
OUT OF THE SHADOWS. 

Out of the shadow of sadness, 
v Into the sunshine of gladness, 

Into the light of the blest; 
Out of a land very dreary, 
Out of the world of the weary, 

Into the rapture of rest. 



56? 



A YAN— MILLS. 

Out of to-day's sin and sorrow 
Into the blissful to-morrow, 

Into a day without gloom ; 
Out of a land filled with sighing, 
Land of the dead and the dying, 

Into a land without tomb. 

Out of a life of commotion, 
Tempest-swept oft as the ocean, 

Dark as the wreck drifting o'er, 
Into a land calm and quiet, 
Never a storm cometh nigh it, 

Never a wreck on its shore. — /. W. Ryan. 

MORE THAN MIDWAY. 

(Sailors on their voyages touch their cups to " Friends Astern ! " until half way over; then, to 
" Friends Ahead ! " Reading this statement in another volume suggested to Miss Mills the follow- 
ing original poem. — Editor.) 

Onward, we are ever sailing 

Over life's rough, stormy sea; 
" Friends astern " the mists are veiling — 
Friends we loved so tenderly. 

Friends ahead, for us are waiting; 

Loved, not lost, but gone before ; 
Come then, winds, our sails inflating, 

Bear us quickly to that shore ! 

Light from yonder mansions streaming 

Pales the sunlight's brightest ray ; 
Just outside the shutters, gleaming, 

Is the light of heaven's day. 

Yes, eternity is dawning, 

Smiles have calmed the breakers' foam ; 

Night has given place to morning. 
Lo ! the tireless songsters come. 

O'er the lighted pathway flying, 

Halleluia ! all is well ! 
Death is gain — if this be dying — 

Back on earth the tidings tell. 

Friends ahead, give unto Jesus 

Blessing, glory, power and might; 
Friends astern, join in the chorus, 

While we bid to earth " Good-night." — Abbie Milk. 
Fayette, Iewa. 



568 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

THE SONG OF THE NEW LIFE. 

I shall never forget my own first impression of the morning 
song of the English skylark. In my zeal as a traveller to see 
all that could be seen, I had arisen with the sun, and had wan- 
dered off alone over the hills surrounding the old city of Win- 
chester and its grand cathedral. The rays of the rising sun had 
changed the dew-drops into diamonds, and the early breeze had 
awakened the lark both to song and to flight ; for, as this almost 
spirit-bird begins to sing, it commences also mounting upon its 
wings, and, mounting, it continues to sing, and, singing, it con- 
tinues to mount higher and still higher, as if it had truly bid 
adieu to earth, as Jeremy Taylor has it, and had gone to mingle 
with the choirs of heaven. At last I could no longer see the 
bird. Its form was entirely lost to my vision, but its song was 
still heard ; its glad notes still came floating down from heaven, 
like the music of an angel, and charmed my heart the more, 
since my eye could no longer discern the singer. 

Such is the song of a holy life; for the Christian, as he com- 
mences the song of the new life, commences his upward course, 
and his song grows sweeter as he rises ; and it is never so sweet, 
so moving, so attractive, as when the singer is lost to human 
vision, and the notes come floating down to us from the upper 
spirit-world. Listen ! Canjve not even now hear some notes 
of the life-song of some departed loved one ? If the ear is too 
dull to catch the spirit strains, can not the heart discern the 
melody, and is there not awakened within us kindred har- 
monies ? They tell us that when two lutes are attuned to the 
same key, and placed near each other, when one is struck the 
other is heard to send forth notes and tones of kindred harmony. 
May not our spirits be. thus so nearly attuned to the same key 
with those of our loved ones who have gone before to heaven, 
and may we not draw so near to them in spiritual union and 
sympathy, that, even while we are yet upon the earth, our souls 
may send forth occasional strains at least of that song which fills 
all hearts and occupies all voices in the choirs of the redeemed? 
Yes, it is even so. — J. Stanford Holme, D. D. 



HA GNER—HER VE Y. r fa 

THE UPWARD FLIGHT. 

Are we almost there in our homeward flight ? 

Are those the home-lights that gleam afar? 
Have we bade farewell to the shadowy night, 

And entered the realm of the morning star? 

Faint to my ear come the sounds of earth : 

Her wail of anguish and wild despair, 
The hollow ring of her idle mirth 

Are lost in the depths of this upper air. 

And now a breath, like the breath of morn, 

A light, a radiance spreads around, 
And forms of that mystic radiance born 

Seem floating hither glory crowned. 

Oh, angel, lend me the shade of thy wing ; 

I see the portals of light unrolled, 
With songs of welcome their arches ring — 

The ransomed is safe in the heavenly fold. — L. H. Hagner. 

THE SOUL'S ARRIVAL IN HEAVEN. 

And now they are gone. The struggles of reluctant nature 
are over. The body sleeps in death ; the soul launches into the 
invisible state. But who can imagine the delightful surprise, 
when they find themselves surrounded by guardian angels, in- 
stead of weepi?ig friends ? How securely do they wing their 
way, and pass through unknown worlds, under the conduct of 
those celestial guides ! The vale of tears is quite lost. Fare- 
well, forever, the realms of woe, and range of malignant beings ! 
They arrive on the frontiers of inexpressible felicity. They " are 
come to the city of the living God : " while a voice sweeter than 
music in her softest strains, sweet as the harmony of hymning 
seraphim, congratulates their arrival and bespeaks their admis- 
sion : Lift up your heads, ye gates ; and be ye lifted up, ye ever- 
lasting doors, that the heirs of glory may enter in. 

Here, then, let us leave the spirits and souls of the righteous; 
escaped from an entangling wilderness, and received into a para- 
dise of delights ! escaped from the territories of disquietude, and 
settled in regions of unmolested security! Here they sit down 
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, in the kingdom of their Father. 



e; 7 o REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Here they mingle with an innumerable company of angels, and 
rejoice around the throne of the Lamb : rejoice in the fruition 
of present felicity and in the assured expectation of an incon- 
ceivable addition to their bliss ; when God shall call the heavens 
from above, and the earth, that he may judge his people. 

— Rev. James Hervey, A. M. 

THE FIRST HOUR IN HEAVEN. 

Oh, what is this splendor that beams on me now, 

This beautiful sunrise that dawns on my soul, 
While faint and far-off land and sea lie below, 

And under my feet the huge golden clouds roll ? 

To what mighty king doth this city belong, 

With its rich jewelled shrines and its gardens of flowers, 

With its breaths of sweet incense, its measures of song, 
And the light that is gilding its numberless towers ? 

See ! forth from the gates, like a bridal array, 

Come the princes of heaven, how bravely they shine ! 

'Tis to welcome the stranger, to show me the way, 
And to tell me that all I see round me is mine. 

There are millions of saints in their ranks and degrees, 

And each with a beauty and crown of his own ; 
And there, far outnumberingothe sands of the seas, 

The nine rings of angels encircle the throne. 

And oh ! if the exiles of earth could but win, 

One sight of the beauty of Jesus above, 
From that hour they would cease to be able to sin, 

And earth would be heaven ; for heaven is love. 

But words may not tell of the vision of peace, 
With its worshipful seeming, its marvellous fires ; 

Where the soul is at large, where its sorrows shall cease, 
And the gift has outbidden its boldest desires. 

No sickness is here, no bleak, bitter cold, 

No hunger, no debt, prison, or weariful toil ; 
No robbers to rifle our treasures of gold, 

No rust to corrupt, and no canker to spoil. 



FABER— PRIME. 571 

My God ! and it was but an hour ago 

That I lay on a bed of unbearable pains; 
All was cheerless around me, all weeping and woe; 

Now the wailing is changed to angelical strains. 

Because I have served thee, were life's pleasures all lost? 

Was it gloom, pain, or blood, that won heaven for me? 
Oh, no! one enjoyment alone could life boast, 

And that, dearest Lord, was my service of Thee. 

I had hardly to give ; 'twas enough to receive, 
Only not to impede the sweet grace from above ; 

And, this first hour in heaven, I can hardly believe 

In so great a reward for so little a love.-^F. W. Fader, D. D. 

TWO YEARS IN HEAVEN. 

Two years ago he went to heaven. With us they have been 
long, long years, since we heard the sound of his sweet voice 
and the merry laugh that burst from his glad heart. 

He was the youngest of our flock. Three summers he had 
been with us, and oh! he was brighter and sunnier than any 
summer day of them all. But he died as the third year of his 
life was closing. The others were older than he ; and all we 
had of childhood's glee and gladness was buried when we laid 
him in the grave Since then our hearth has been desolate, and 
our hearts have been yearning for the boy who is gone. " Gone, 
gone, but not lost," we have said a thousand times ; and we 
think of him ever as living and blessed in another place not far 
from us. 

Two years in heaven ! They do not measure time in that 
world ; there are no weeks, or months, or years ; but all the 
time we have been mourning his absence here he has been 
happy there. And when we think of what he has been enjoy- 
ing, and the rapid progress he has been making, we feel that it 
is well for him that he has been taken away ! 

Two years with angels ! They have been his constant com- 
panions, his teachers, too ; and from them he has drawn lessons 
of knowledge and of love. The cherubim are said to excel in 
knowledge; while love glows more argently in the breasts of 



5/2 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



seraphim. He has been two years in the company of both, and 
must have become very like them. 

Two years with the redeemed! They have told him of the 
Saviour, in whose blood they washed their robes, and whose 
righteousness is their salvation. The child, while with us, knew 
little of Jesus and his dying love; but he has heard of him now, 
and has learned to love him who said, " Suffer little children to 
come unto me." There are some among those redeemed who 
would have loved him here, had they been living with us ; but 
they went to glory before him, and have welcomed him now to 
their company. I am not sure that they know him as our 
child ; and yet do we love to think that he is in the arms of 
those who have gone from our arms, and that thus broken 
families are reunited around the throne of God and the Lamb. 

Two years with Christ ! It is joy to know that our child has 
been two years with the Saviour, in his immediate presence; 
learning of him, and making heaven vocal with songs of rapture 
and love. The blessed Saviour took little children in his arms 
when he was here on earth, and he takes them in his bosom 
there. Blessed Jesus ! blessed children ! blessed child ! He often 
wept when he was with us ; he suffered much before he died : 
seven days and nights he was torn with fierce convulsions ere 
his soul yielded and fled to heaven. But now for two years he 
has not wept. He has known no pain for two years. That 
little child, who was pleased with a rattle, now meets with 
angels, and feels himself at home. He walks among the tallest 
spirits that bend in the presence of the Infinite, and is as free 
and happy as any who are there. And when we think of joys 
that are his, we are more than willing that he should stay where 
he now dwells, though our house is darkened by the shadow of 
his grave, and our hearts are aching all the time for his return. 
Long and weary have been the years without him ; but they 
have been blessed years to him in heaven. " Even so, Father." 
" Not our will, but thine be done." — Rev. Dr, Prime in TJwughts 
*n the Death of Little Children. 



REV. JOHN REID. ^^ 

WILL INFANTS REMEMBER THINGS PERTAINING TO EARTH ? 

In the case of some little children who have died, there ma) 
be a slight remembrance of having lived upon the earth ; even 
as a child born in one country, and moving away to another 
when it is quite young, may remember a few things — a house, 
perhaps the one it lived in, a yard or street, a fence around the 
garden, or a certain tree that grew there, a bird that used to sing 
in a cage, a particular boy or girl that lived near by, a man or 
woman that had bestowed some favor, the physician who had to 
lance a certain part of the body. I have noticed this, however : 
that while young children remember at first several things con- 
nected with the place where they formerly lived, it is not long 
before they have forgotten all. The picture that was engraved 
upon the mind was so delicate that the rush of thoughts across 
it wore it all away. 

Whether anything like this will take place with the child who 
has gone to heaven is a question. I should rather suppose that 
what was remembered at first would be remembered afterwards ; 
that the heavenly child would not forget like the earthly one. 
We have mentioned as probable that there will be a quicken- 
ing of the whole mental nature when the infant spirit reaches 
heaven. If this be so, then the memory will be strengthened ; 
that which entered the mind at first will be remembered after- 
wards with great distinctness. Visions of the past will not fade 
away like the image from a coin ; impressions will not be effaced 
like footprints in the sand by the force of the waves. It is cer- 
tainly a pleasing thought that the little pilgrim who tarried with 
us for a night bore away with it to the skies some memorials 
of the earth ; as if some of the golden grains of time clung to its 
feet when it departed, which, without even thinking, it carried 
upward to its home among the stars. Perhaps in this way many 
an infant in heaven will think of the mother who watched and 
wept over it; of the father whose voice was distinguished from 
that of others ; of the sister who carried it about the room, or 
played with it during the passage of some quiet hour. The 
angels, when they come to see us, have always about them some 
of the fragrance of heaven, as if they held in their hand one of 



574 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



the flowers of Paradise, so when the infant departs to glory it 
may have about its person some of the sweet perfumes of earthly 
love. It is possible that this may be so ; it would be pleasant 
if it should be so. There would in this way be vestiges of a 
former home — reminiscences of a land and a life that are far 
away. 

It may be that when an infant dies quite young, no relic of the 
earth and time goes with it. To all intents and purposes, heaven 
may appear as its native land. As the infant that has been laid 
down at some one's door on a dark night is taken up and placed 
in a family where it lives and grows, knowing no other father 
and mother but those who care for it, and no other home but 
the one in which it finds itself, so the young creature that lives 
in heaven, having no recollection of any other country, may 
think of that as its home. It is a blessed thing to begin life es- 
sentially in heaven. What a pure and peaceful land that is ! 
Far removed from all human care and woe. This world is a 
weary place. The people that live here are not well. One almost 
wishes that he had died young, and that in heaven, amidst all 
perfection, he had found the blessed land. It fills the soul with 
a quiet joy to think of myriads of infant beings inhabiting the 
city of God, as if that was the place where first they saw the 
light ; and dwelling in a palace home with the principalities and 
powers of eternity, as if no other home had ever sheltered them, 
and no other companions but sinless creatures had ever been 
theirs. 

Will such infants be taught anything about this earth ? I 
should suppose that they would. This is a dark world, and all 
the darker by reason of its contrast with heaven, yet I think it 
would be well for the saved child to know something about it. 
To know that it belonged to a fallen race, and that the Son of 
God had to suffer for man in order to redeem him, would be 
deeply important. The thought then would dawn upon the 
mind of the child that it had been saved. To be ignorant of this 
would be an injury to the soul; for in that case it could not be 
thankful — could not praise God for his salvation. But knowing 
this great central fact, it could join intelligently and heartily in 



REV. JOHN RE ID. H75 

the song of redemption with the millions of the purified. It 
could know also that numbers of the human race became ex- 
ceedingly wicked, and were finally lost, and that numbers died 
in infancy and were saved. This would make the young mind 
to see what a blessing it was to die at the beginning of life. If 
it had grown up like others in a world of evil, like others it 
might have been lost forever. In fact, the leading things relat- 
ing to this earth could easily be revealed to the child as it was 
able to bear them — giving it in course of time a synopsis of 
human history. — Rev. John Reid. 

LOOK UP TO HEAVEN. 

Look up to heaven, pale child of sorrow ! 

Lift from the earth thy tearful eyes : 
See ! there dawns a joyous morrow, 
Far in yonder skies. 

Lo ! the clouds are swiftly breaking — 

Hope's bright sun streams forth to cheer 5 
Thy sad heart to gladness waking, 

From its night of fear. 

Should misfortune's frown oppress thee, 
Should thou drain life's poisoned cup, 
Jesus stoops from heaven to bless thee — 
He will bear thee up. 

Though by earthly friends forsaken, 

Those who once seemed true to be — 
Let thy faith remain unshaken — 
Jesus loveth thee ! 

To despair yield no dominion 

O'er thy spirit's drooping wing — 
Soon released on angel's pinion, 

Thou in heaven shalt sing — - 

Praises to the Power that led thee 

Through a world of sin and strife — 
He who by the wayside fed thee 

With the " bread of life "— 



576 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Gave thee drink from that blest fountain, 

Whence such healing waters pour — 
Dweller in " God's Holy Mountain," 

There thou'lt thirst no more. — A. G. C. 

THE PARTING AND THE MEETING. 

"To die is gain" to the Christian, because for him death 
transforms the future. To all of us now the future is full of fear. 
We know it will bring with it changes. If we be spared, yet we 
shall be called to part with those we love, and to lay them in 
the silent tomb. Old age means solitariness. One by one the 
companions of youth depart. Gray hairs speak not only of mul- 
tiplied years, but also of added griefs. The man who by reason 
of strength attains to fourscore years, finds himself a stranger 
amongst a strange generation, without any to sympathize with 
him, with no other solace than this, that soon he too must go 
the way of all flesh. But for the Christian death changes all 
this. To him the future means reunion. Each year will bring 
home the dear ones. One by one they will come to complete 
the immortal circle. 

You may have seen an emigrant vessel leave our shores. Oh, 
what tearful partings ! What anguished cries ! What heart- 
broken farewells ! How those left behind strain their vision, 
and wave their tokens of love, so long as they can catch one 
glimpse of the departing sail ! And when it has faded from 
their view, with what heavy hearts do they slowly seek their 
homes ! But did you ever go with such a vessel to its destined 
port ? Was there weeping there ? Were there cries of anguish 
there? As the vessel hauled up to the dock, did you not be- 
hold, waiting with warm welcomes, loved ones who had gone 
before ? Were not eager hands held out to press yours in 
loving grasp? In the pure joy of that hour, were not all the 
pains of parting and all the perils of the voyage forgotten ? 

And so it is with us here. Again and again we go down to 
the dark verge of eternity to bid farewell to departing friends. 
But a little way on their voyage can we see them. Sitting in 
our saddened homes, we behold not the shining ones waiting to 
receive them on the other shore. But while we weep, they 




Look Up to Heaven." 



BER TRAM— ABB Y. - - y 

rejoice. Friends for whom they mourned have welcomed them 
to the better land. For us they mourn not; not because they 
have forgotten us, but because they know that in a little while 
we too will join them to part no more.— R. A. Bertram. 

"IN THE LAND OF THE BLEST." 

" Dear father, I ask for my mother in vain. 

Has she sought some far country, her health to regain ? 

Has she left our cold climate of frost and of snow, 

For some warm sunny land, where the soft breezes* blow ? " 

" Yes, yes, gentle boy, thy mother is gone 

To a climate where sorrow and pain are unknown ; 

Her spirit is strengthened, her frame is at rest; 

There is health, there is peace in the Land of the Blest! " 

" Is that land, my dear father, more lovely than ours ? 

Are the rivers more clear and more blooming the flowers? 

Does summer shine over it all the year long? 

Is it cheered by the gladness of music and song?" 

" Yes ; the flowers are despoiled not by winter or blight— 

The well-springs of life are exhaustless and bright; 

And by exquisite voices sweet hymns are addressed 

To the Lord, who reigns over the Land of the Blest ! " 

" Yet that land to my mother will lonely appear; 
She shrunk from the glance of a stranger while here; 
From her foreign companions I know she will flee, 
And sigh, dearest father, for you and for me." 
" My darling, thy mother rejoices to gaze 
On the long-severed friends of her earliest days. 
Her parents have found there a mansion of rest, 
And welcome their child to the Land of the Blest ! " 

" How I long to partake of such meetings of bliss ! 
That land must be surely more happy than this ; 
On you, my kind lather, the journey depends, 
Let us go to my mother, her kindred and friends." 
"Not on me, love; I trust I may reach that bright clime, 
But in patience I wait till the Lord's chosen time; 
And must strive, while awaiting his gracious behest, 
To guide thy young steps to the Land of the Blest 



i- 1 " 



" Thou must toil through a world full of dangers, my boy 
Thy peace it may blight, and thy virtue destroy; 



£^8 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Nor wilt thou, alas ! be withheld from its snares, 

By a mother's kind counsel, a mother's fond prayers ; 

Yet fear not, the God whose direction we crave 

Is mighty to strengthen, to shield and to save : 

And his hand may yet lead thee, a glorified guest, 

To the home of thy mother, the Land of the Blest ! " — Mrs. Abdy. 

HERE AND THERE. 

Here, to get a new thing is to give up the old. There, to get 
a new thing is to fulfil the old. Here, to keep an old thing is to 
see it fade, and love its age not as you loved its youth, but 
somehow plaintively. Here, to take a new thing is to stare at 
its novelty, and to feel its newness, and to love it somewhat 
timidly, uncertainly. But there, there is neither new nor old — 
there is a steadfast freshening of all things. Here, incessant 
change washes my life shore like a tide, leaving me more shells 
to gather, but leaving only shells. There, incessant change 
brings me fresh treasures home, as waves bring ships to port. 
Here, to make a new friendship often debilitates the old, or else 
forgets it. There, every friendship is a furtherance, an intensity 
of all. Here, I cannot see the children growing up, but by 
seeing the strong men running down. There, we shall stand 
together and never fail. That which is venerable here is pass- 
ing — that which is dewy with youth is only coming. There, 
that which is venerable is that which is young, and that which 
is coming has already come. Here, to visit is to leave home — 
to come home is to relinquish companionship. There, to be to- 
gether is to be at home — to be at home is to be in boundless 
fellowship. Here, every morrow makes to-day a yesterday, and 
every to-day stands faltering between the two. There, to have 
to-day is to have yesterday, and the to-morrow is to-day. 
Here, day is known by night, and night can only wait for 
morning. There, dawn never fades, and tireless day-time needs 
no night. — H. S. Carpenter. 

GROUNDS OF FUTURE RECOGNITION. 

Paul before the throne is and inevitably must be the identical 
Paul who preached at Athens and was martyred at Rome. 



THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D. 



579 



When he longed to "depart and be with Christ," he expected 
not to be somebody else, but the same individual. Moses died 
fifteen centuries before the advent of jesus Christ. Yet there 
was a personality still existing, who appeared at the time of 
Christ's transfiguration on the mount, and who was addressed 
by him as Moses. The prophet Elijah, who had died seven 
hundred years before, was there also. When the great apostle 
speaks of his Thessalonian converts as his " glory and joy in the 
presence of the Lord Jesus Christ," he assuredly expected to 
meet the same persons in heaven that he had labored with in 
Thessalonica. If they were not the same people, and if he 
could not meet them there, how could they be to him a " crown " 
or a " joy? " 

This point is clearly in accordance with common sense. 
Whatever change may be produced by death, personal identity 
will not be altered by one jot or tittle. The sinner who sins 
here will be the same sinner who will be punished in a world 
of woe. The believer who is welcomed with the glad salute, 
" Come, thou blessed of my Father ! " will be the same person 
who on earth had done the Father's bidding. Without this 
preservation of perfect identity, the whole idea of a future 
retribution of rewards and punishments would be an absurd 
impossibility. 

If identity is preserved in eternity, will the faculty of memory 
also survive the grave ? Undoubtedly it will. The obliteration 
of memory would amount to a partial destruction of the indi- 
vidual. It would remove some of heaven's richest enjoyments. 
If I cannot remember what my Redeemer has done and suffered 
for me, how can I join in the ever "new song " of grateful praise 
before his throne ? The obliteration of memory would take 
away the severest and bitterest of sin's just retributions in hell. 
Upon this point the description of Lazarus and of the selfish 
rich man " in torment," throws a distinct light, for Abraham 
said, " Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy 
good things." 

Put now together these two facts : (i) personal identity is not 
lost in eternity, and (2) memory remains also unimpaired. It 



ij8o REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

follows inevitably that we shall know each other in heaven. 
When David cried out over his dead boy, " I shall go to him ; 
but he shall not return to me ! " that bereaved father expected 
to meet again the child whose spirit had flown home to God. 
Certainly we shall not be more stupid in heaven than we are on 
earth. If I could recognize such a person as Chalmers in his 
pulpit, I cannot fail to recognize that same servant of God in his 
celestial appareling. Martin Luther, in his " Table Talks," 
makes much of this intercourse with father and mother and kin- 
dred in the heavenly home. Sharp, unpoetic old Dr. Emmons 
used to say, " I hope to have some talks with the apostle Paul 
in heaven." And who of us would not experience a fearful 
shock, even amid the hallelujah raptures of Paradise, if the 
sweet affections of kinship were to be obliterated forever. 
Surely God would not so punish those whom he so loves to 
bless. 

That infants will be doomed to the everlasting weakness and 
helplessness and ignorance of infancy seems, to my mind, im- 
possible. No mother would ever want to see her darling babe 
stunted to an unchanged babyhood even here. It would be- 
come a pitiable monstrosity. Half the charm of childhood is 
its constant growth ; its delightful openings, like the rosebud, to 
new thought and development. The idea of an undeveloped 
infancy in heaven would be almost a libel on the Creator ! My 
darling boy will be none the less my own child in the " Father's 
House," because (like another child at Nazareth) he has in- 
creased in stature and knowledge, and favor with God and man. 
That I shall know him there — if God's rich grace doth bring me 
there — I have no more doubt of than I have of the existence of 
a heavenly rest. Good Dean Alford struck a chord in every 
Christian heart when he sang : 

" Oh ! then what raptured greetings, 
On heaven's happy shore; 
What knitting severed friendships up, 
Where partings are no more ! " 

— Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D. 



MRS. H. B. STOWE. 58^ 

THE OTHER WORLD. 

It lies around us like a cloud — 

A world we do not see ; 
Yet the sweet closing of an eye 

May bring us there to be. 

Its gentle breezes fan our cheek, 

Amid our worldly cares 
Its gentle voices whisper love, 

And mingle with our prayers. 

Sweet hearts around us throb and beat, 

Sweet helping hands are stirred, 
And palpitate the veil between 

With breathings almost heard. 

The silence, awful, sweet and calm, 

They have no power to break ; 
For mortal words are not for them 

To utter or partake. 

So thin, so soft, so sweet, they glide, 

So near to press they seem — 
They seem to lull us to our rest, 

And melt into our dream. 

And in the hush of rest they bring, 

'Tis easy now to see 
How lovely and how sweet a pass 

The hope of death may be. 

To close the eye and close the ear, 

Wrapped in a trance of bliss, 
And gently drawn in loving arms, 

To swoon to that — from this. 

Scarce knowing if we wake or sleop, 

Scarce asking where we are • 
To feel all evil slink away, 

All sorrow and all care. 

Sweet souls around us ! watch us stilly 

Press neai-er to our side ; 
Into our thoughts, into our prayers, 

With gentle helpings glide. 



$g 2 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

Let death between us be as naught, 

A dried and vanished stream ; 
Your joy be the reality, 

Our suffering life the dream. — Mrs. H. B. Stswe. 



When will Christian men, having the power of this world's 
kealing in their hands learn to have confidence enough in it to 
Jpply it ? We sing, 

" Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal," 

thinking of death and bereavement, and waiting for heaven to do 
it when we are done with earth. But every sorrow, civil, politi- 
cal, financial, social, temporal and individual, would be cured 
immediately if heaven's principles could be applied at once. 

—Bishop H. W. Warren, D. D. 

PERSONAL RECOGNITION. 

This resurrection of the body makes certain a personal recog- 
nition in the life to come. We shall retain our human forms. 
Paul's analogy at least affirms this, that as a grain springing from 
seed is like to seed, so bodies springing from the tomb will be 
in their nature like a correspondent to the bodies deposited 
there. There will be a parting with flesh and blood, and all its 
deformities and deficiencies. Whatever pertains to its organism 
and functions here will not fre needed in the new estate, but it 
is quite certain that the glorified body will be cast in the mold 
of the earthly form. Identity of person, individuality of being, 
seem to require this. When God fashioned a body for a soul, 
he made it a masterpiece of his handiwork. The soul and body 
joined together made the man. As in our flesh and blood life 
we bear the form of the man in whose line we come, so in the 
spiritual life we shall bear the form of the man glorified in 
whose line we are already made heirs of heaven. 

Christ's risen body retained its original form, and doubtless 
retains it now in the perfection of the glorified state. There 
was a change in him, such a change as is coupled with the 
amazing fact of the resurrection. What the change was we can- 
not say. He doubtless had the majestic mien of the conqueror. 



E. P. GOODWIN, D.D. 583 

the divinity within refusing longer to be repressed, but withal, 
he was so identical with the form he had previously borne that 
he could readily be recognized. 

Like that will be our resurrection forms. There will be no 
difficulty in discerning friends, and, more than this, it is prob- 
able that there will be no need of introduction to the heroes and 
heroines of the faith when Moses and Elias appeared with the 
Lord to the disciples on the mount of Transfiguration. They 
knew them, so far as we know, without a word of explanation. 
Doubtless we shall know Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as we 
sit down with them, and can pick them out of the celestial 
throng, and we shall be known as we know in that glad reunion 
of God's great family. There will undoubtedly be infinite apti- 
tudes and facilities for getting acquainted. 

And then the question arises, "Shall we know our dear ones 
there just as we left them here? Will the mother, from whose 
arms her babe was taken, have it given back to her just as it 
was, an infant, when, ten, twenty or more years ago, she kissed 
it for the last time? " There is no definite teaching of Scripture 
on this point. Each may cherish the conception that most sat- 
isfies the longing of his heart, only, of course, taking care that 
we do not reduce the level of higher life to the level and quality 
of this earthly existence. On one side, Mr. Bickstett, in his 
" Yesterday, To-Day, and Forever," takes the ground that the 
infant dead remains an infant, grows in perfection as a babe, but 
can never rise to the stature and perfection of an adult. Thus, 
a lily may be as perfect in its way as an oak, and the rose of 
Sharon as beautiful as the stately cedar of Lebanon. This con- 
ception is very beautiful and very comforting, and we may hold 
it if we prefer. There is, however, this objection to it: Not 
every mother wishes her babe to remain a babe always. Over 
against this idea may be set that familiar conception of Long- 
fellow in his lines on " Resignation : " 

" She is not dead, the child of your affection, 
But gone unto that school 
Where she no longer needs our protection, 
For Christ himself doth rule. 



C$4 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

" Not as a child shall we again behold her, 
For when, with raptures wild, 
In our embraces we again enfold her, 
She will not be a child, 

" But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion, 
Clothed with celestial grace, 
And beautiful with all the soul's expansion, 
Shall we behold her face." 

If we are to choose between those two views, it would seem 
that the greater truth lies in the latter, and if it suggests any 
disappointment, that disappointment is of a heavenly sort — the 
disappointment of beholding a rosebud blossom into the full 
bloom of which it was the prophecy. 

These recognitions of friends do not need to be deferred until 
after the resurrection. They begin at once. It is a blessed 
thought with which to close a weary way and pilgrimage, that 
we shall one day be satisfied, and that day grows on apace. 
Not far hence there shall come an hour of blessed restoration 
for those whose husbands, parents, or children have been torn 
from them. We speak that word " death," and feel our blood 
run cold. But if we put God's meaning into it, our hearts would 
beat as if we heard the bells of heaven ; for when it comes, not 
only shall the veil lift from those mysteries into which we vainly 
try to look, but with its lifting will come back the voices, faces, 
and forms of those gone before. And they will come to stay. 
No more farewells, no kissing of marble lips, no tears over 
grassy mounds ; but, instead, home reached, where we and our 
beloved shall abide forever. — E. P. Goodwin, D. D» 

WHAT IF FRIENDS ARE MISSED? 

If we should miss in the groups that are clad in white robes, 
and that are around the throne, beloved ones that we revered 
and loved with nature's warmest sympathies on earth, will not 
that be a gap? will not that be agony, and sorrow, and distress? 
And how is that compatible with the statement that in the age 
to come there will be neither sorrow, nor crying, nor tears, nor 
any more pain? I admit that this is a difficult question to 



JOHN CUMMING, D. B., F. R. S. E. 585 

answer; but I submit what I think approximates to an answer, 
if it is not a perfect and complete one. May it not be that only 
the ties of nature, that have also been sanctified by grace, shall 
survive even in recollection, in sympathy and in thought ? For 
instance, a Christian woman is married to an unregenerate and 
an unchristian husband. The tie of nature ceased when the hus- 
band died, or when the wife was gathered into everlasting glory. 
May it not be that this tie, not having been consecrated and 
baptized by grace, not having been glorified by Christian light 
and Christian love, may, having ceased to be a reality— for death 
separates wife from husband, and dissolves the marriage tie — 
cease also to be a recollection? It will be impossible to forget, 
because we have memories, that we once did sin upon earth. 
Yet the recollection of those sins, to those who are washed 
from them, will occasion no sorrow. In the same manner the 
glorified wife may have no pain at the recollection of the lost 
husband, or, at least, no pain from missing him there, because 
that tie, once so near and dear, dropped when nature died, and 
/s remembered no more. (We scarcely think pure affection will 
Entirely cease in heaven in any case, though earthly loves in so 
jar as they were sensual will vanish, and even the purest will be 
\\i small consequence when swallowed up in the ecstatic rapture 
of immortal joys. — Editor}) Besides, may it not cast a little 
light upon this very difficult thing if we consider that the angels 
that are in glory must recollect that a vast battalion of their 
numbers is now writhing in endless agony? Angels fell; Satan 
is the prince of the fallen angels ; yet the happiness of angels in 
heaven is not diluted by the recollection that many of those 
that were once there are not there now. There is also a text, 
" Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; " that is, 
all ties, bonds, relationships, that are mere flesh and blood, and 
that never were consecrated, sanctified, or baptized by the Spirit 
of God, do not enter into the kingdom of heaven ; are broken 
off and cease there forever and ever; not the memory, but the 
fact of them. And we have almost a dim presentiment of this 
from our blessed Lord's words : " While he yet talked to the 
people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, 



$$6 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, 
thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak 
with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, 
Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he 
stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold 
my mother and my brethren ! For whosoever shall do the will 
of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and 
sister, and mother ; " as if the earthly relationship was absorbed 
and annihilated in the divine and the higher relationship of 
God. 

But if it should be maintained by any that there is no recog- 
nition above, or before us, that would not diminish these sup- 
posed sorrows. If there shall be pain, or the possibility of pain, 
from the reminiscence that one is missing that we want to 
meet, if there be no recognition at all, we shall equally fail to be 
sure that those we wish to meet have been admitted there. You 
do not get rid of the difficulty by denying recognition in the 
world to come. But besides, of this we are absolutely sure, 
that all painful recollections are impossible there. We know 
from our own experience what may be a presentiment and pre- 
figuration of it, that feelings of grief at the loss of near and dear 
ones, at first most poignant, almost intolerable, gradually sub- 
side into resignation. And so it may be, that missing in the 
groups of the saved some that we could wish to be there, our 
regrets may so subside into resignation to God's most excellent 
will that we shall be able to say, with an emphasis with which 
we never said it before, " Thy will be done here, even as it is 
done elsewhere in heaven." 

But may it not be that as there is hope against hope respect- 
ing dead relatives which we feel here, it may be in mercy per- 
mitted to us, in the realms of glory, that we shall never be sure 
that some we expected to meet are not there ? Our Father's 
house has all infinitude for its dimensions, all eternity for its 
duration; and though we may not meet some that we may wish 
to meet, that will not prove that they are not in some other 
chamber of the universal home, in some other compartment of 
our Father's house. But of this we are absolutely sure, that we 



CUMMING—BR YANT. 5 gp 

shall have no feelings, desires, or sympathies, that are not »x» 
perfect harmony with the will and the mind of God. 

— John Cumming, D. D., F. R. S. E 

HOW SHALL I KNOW THEE? 

How shall I know thee in the sphere which keeps 

The disembodied spirits of the dead, 
When all of thee that time can wither sleeps, 

And perishes amid the dust we tread ? 

For I shall feel the sting of ceaseless pain, 

If there I meet thy gentle spirit not : 
Nor hear the voice I love, nor read again 

In thy serenest eyes the tender thought. 

Will not thine own meek heart demand me there, 
That heart whose fondest throbs were given ? 

My name on earth was ever in thy prayer, 
And wilt thou never utter it in heaven ? 

In meadows fanned by heaven's life-breathing wind, 

In the resplendence of that glorious sphere, 
And larger movements of the unfettered mind, 

Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here? 

The love that lived through all the stormy past, 

And meekly with my harsher nature bore, 
And deeper grew, and tenderer to the last, 

Shall it expire with life, and be no more ? 

A happier lot than mine, and larger light, 

Await thee there ; for thou hast bowed thy will 

In cheerful homage to the rule of right, 
And lovest all, and renderest good for ill. 

For me the sordid cares in which I dwell 

Shrink and consume my heart, as heat the scroll: 

And wrath has left its scar — that fire of hell 
Hath left its frightful scar upon my soul. 

Vet though thou wearest the glory of the sky, 

Wilt thou not keep the same beloved name, 
The same fair, thoughtful brow and gentle eye, 

Lovelier in heaven's sweet climate, yet the same? 



5 g$ RE WARD OF THE RIGHTE O US. 

Shalt thou not teach me in that calmer home 
The wisdom that I learned so ill in this — 

The wisdom which is love — till I become 
Thy fit companion in that land of bliss ? 

— William Cullen Bryant. 

HOW CAN \ PREPARE FOR HEAVEN? 

(One of our Armenian brethren called and inquired, with much solicitude, whether I could not 
point out some way by which he could keep himself free from sin. He remarked that he found sin 
continually returning upon him, and this was true of particular sins which he thought were long ago 
subdued. It was truly gratifying to me to see this instance of tenderness of conscience, and I gave 
our brother such counsel as appeared to me appropriate to his case. — Journal of Mr. Dwighi at 
Constantinople— Missionary Herald, January, 1844.) 

I ask thee not for thy golden dust, 

As a boon to my poverty given ; 
For this I know would but weaken my trust 

In the arm of my Father in heaven. 

I ask thee not where the jewels are, 

In whose search anxious mortals have striven, 

For these I well know will never compare 
With the stars in the bright dome of heaven. 

I ask thee not for the pleasant fields 

Whence thou by thy mission wast driven ; 
I seek better fruit than earth ever yields, 

'Mid the plains and bright sunlight of heaven. 

I ask thee not for the trumpet of Fame, 

That my praise to the winds may be given j 
I desire far more, that my worthless name 

May be found on the pages of heaven. 

But oh ! I am told in God's blessed word 

That transgressions must all be forgiven ; 
That sin must be vanquished and passion subdued, 

Ere my soul sees the mansion of heaven. 

Oh ! tell me, then, tell, thou herald of God, 
How, when storm and temptation have risen, 

The powers of sin under foot may be trod, 

And my soul be thus fitted for heaven ? — A, J, J\ 
Merlin, January 12, 1844. 



R UMI— CHALMERS. 5 $g 

THE CONDITION OF ENTRANCE. 

(Translated from the Persian by W. R. Alger.) 

To heaven approached a Sufi saint, 

From groping in the darkness late, 
And, tapping timidly and faint, 

Besought admission at God's gate. 

Said God, " Who seeks to enter here ? " 
" 'Tis I, dear Friend," the saint replied, 

And trembling much with hope and fear. 
" If it be thou, without abide." 

Sadly to earth the poor saint turned, 

To bear the scourging of life's rods ; 
But aye his heart within him yearned 

To mix and lose its love in God's. 

He roamed alone through weary years, 
By cruel men still scorned and mocked, 

Until, from faith's pure fires and tears, 
Again he rose, and modest knocked. 

Asked God, " Who now is at the door ? 

" It is thyself, beloved Lord," 
Answered the saint, in doubt no more, 

But clasped and rapt in his reward. — Dschellaleddin Rumi. 

HOLINESS THE BEATITUDE OF HEAVEN. 

Let it be remembered that nothing is admitted there which 
worketh wickedness or maketh a lie; and that, therefore, with 
every feculence of evil detached and dissevered from the mass, 
there is naught in heaven but the pure, the transparent element 
of goodness — its unbounded love, its tried and unalterable faith- 
fulness, its confiding sincerity. Think of the expressive desig- 
nation given it in the Bible, the land of uprightness. Above all, 
think that, revealed in visible glory, the righteous God, who 
loveth righteousness, there sitteth upon his throne, in the midst 
of a rejoicing family — himself rejoicing over them, because, 
formed in his own likeness, they love what he loves, they rejoice 
in what he rejoices. There may be palms of triumph; there 
may be crowns of unfading lustre; there may be pavements of 
emerald, and rivers of pleasure, and groves of surpassing love- 



590 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



liness, and palaces of delight, and high arches in heaven which 
ring with sweetest melody — but, mainly and essentially, it is a 
moral glory which is lighted up there; it is virtue which blooms 
and is immortal there ; it is the goodness by which the spirits 
of the holy are regulated here ; it is this which forms the beati- 
tude of eternity. 

The righteous now, who, when they die and rise again, shall 
be righteous still, have already heaven in their bosoms ; and 
when they enter within its portals, they carry the very being 
and substance of its blessedness along with them — the character 
which is itself the whole of heaven's worth, the character which 
is the vary essence of heaven's enjoyments. 

— Thomas Chalmers, D. D., LL. D. 

HOLINESS ESSENTIAL TO HAPPINESS. 

Whfn we think to take part in the joys of heaven without 
holiness, we are as inconsiderate as if we supposed we could 
take an interest in the worship of Christians here below without 
possessing it in our measure. A careless, a sensual, an unbe- 
lieving mind, a mind destitute of the love and fear of God, with 
narrow views and earthly aims, a low standard of duty, and a 
benighted conscience, a mind contented with itself and unre- 
signed to God's will, would feel as little pleasure, at the last 
day, at the words, " Enter into- the joy of thy Lord," as it does 
now at the words, "Let us pray." Nay, much less: because, 
while we are in a church, we may turn our thoughts to other 
subjects, and contrive to forget that God is looking on us ; but 
that will not be possible in heaven. 

We see, then, that holiness, or inward separation from the 
world, is necessary to our admission into heaven, because 
heaven is not heaven — is not a place of happiness — except to 
the holy. There are bodily indispositions which affect the taste, 
so that the sweetest flavors become ungrateful to the palate ; 
and indispositions which impair the sight, tinging the fair face 
of nature with some sickly hue. In like manner, there is a 
moral malady which disorders the inward sight and taste ; and 
no man laboring under it is in a condition to enjoy what Scrip- 



NE WMAN—MAHAN. 



59' 



ture calls ''the fulness of joy in God's presence, and pleasures 
at his right hand for evermore." .... God cannot change his 
nature. Holy he must ever be. But while he is holy, no un- 
holy soul can be happy in heaven. Fire does not inflame iron, 
but it inflames straw. It would cease to be fire if it did not. 
And so heaven itself would be fire to those who would fain es- 
cape across the great gulf from the torments of heli. The finger 
of Lazarus would but increase their thirst. The very " heaven 
that is over their head " will be " brass " to them. 

—John Henry Newman. 

PROBLEMS TO SOLVE IN ETERNITY, 

I believe we shall derive great advantage in eternity from our 
fallible labors here at the glorious systems of truth. Men have, 
it seems to me, wrong views of eternity. They think it is a 
kind of inactive rest, a state of inglorious ease, a rest without 
labor. That is not my idea. The great system of truth is co- 
extensive with the attributes of Jehovah, and while created in- 
telligence remains finite, the glorious realities of the universe, 
and of the infinite character of its Creator, will remain objects 
of wondering investigation and never-wearied research. 

In eternity we shall have problems to solve. We shall have 
angels for our companions, those bright spirits who have for 
long centuries been prying with anxious search into the mystery 
of the redemption by Christ. With desire irrepressible, the 
glories of the Deity incarnate have inspired their angelic minds, 
to know the depths of the riches of infinite grace and mercy, to 
a fallen world. God threw it before them. What a mystery to 
the angels, to the universe! Angels sinned — the bolt leaped 
out from the Eternal Throne, and they descended thundering 
down to the regions of endless night. The justice of God drew 
forth hymns of adoring praise from the awe-struck myriads that 
people the fields of celestial light. By and by this world was 
ushered into being. At its birth the "morning stars sang to- 
gether, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." Now was to 
rise a race of holy beings to supply the place of those who fell. 
But man fell too! He fell! And angels stood aghast, and 



592 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



trembled, for they remembered that fearful day when God 
hurled Satan and his legions from among the morning stars. 
There was silence in heaven's courts. The Son of God pre- 
sented himself before the throne, and beseechingly asked, " Shall 
man, too, go to hell ? " The angels looked, and God, instead 
of sending his bolts to strike man quick to perdition, called an 
angel from the silent throng, and gave him command to go 
down to earth, exclude the sinning pair from Eden, but show 
them kindness, bid them go out and people the world. The 
angels heard the mandate. Is God just? There was mystery! 
From the throne of God, from the depth of the Trinity, one of 
the Persons was to proceed, and in some way atone for the sins 
of man. What was it ? How was it to be ? The Spirit was 
sent down, and prophets prophesied. A strain came up from 
Judea's hills : "To us a child is born, to us a son is given, and 
the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall 
be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlast ■ 
ing Father, the Prince of Peace, of the increase of his govern- 
ment and peace there shall be no end." Angels listened. What 
does it mean ? Who can open the book and loose the seals ? 
Who can solve the mystery? The prophets sang, and as the 
thrilling sounds vibrated on the air, methinks angels caught the 
strain, and it echoed from their lips across the eternal plains. It 
was rich and glorious. But what did it mean? What was it? 
As ages rolled on they bent over the book of the holy prophet, 
to search the import. By and by what was seen ? From the 
depth of the Godhead the Son went forth, and as angels looked, 
he lay incarnate, the babe in Bethlehem's manger. Again from 
the waiting hosts was a messenger commissioned to go to earth 
and tell the welcome news: "Behold I bring you glad tidings 
of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you this 
day is born a Saviour." The angels heard, and as the herald 
flew on his joyful errand, heaven was emptied of its inhabitants, 
and while the wondering shepherds listened to the divine vis- 
itant, Judea's plains and hills echoed the seraphic anthem : 
" Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will 
to men." 



• 





THE BABE OF BETHLEHEM. 

And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts, 
gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. — Malt. ii. II. 



MALTA N - TALMA GE. $g 3 

"Archangels leave their high abode, 
To learn new mysteries here, and tell 
The love of our descending God — 
The glories of Immanuei." 

The mystery of mysteries began to be unrolled. They began 
to see the reason why man was spared, to comprehend how God 
could be just, and man forgiven. Was it not well that the 
angels were left for thousands of years to search and solve that 
mystery? Nor is it yet exhausted. The heavenly choir, be- 
lieve me, do yet oft repeat that song : 

" Glory to God on high, 

And heavenly peace on earth, 
Good-will to men, to angels joy, 
At the Redeemer's birth." 

And how do we know that great problems are not laid up for 
us, to be offered for our solution in the world above ? As the 
glorious future rolls along in the ceaseless cycles of eternity, 
there will be enough to fasten our souls in endless, rapt atten- 
tion. There will be problems which will task our utmost power 
in their solution. And how shall we be prepared for such a 
state ? Be constant, honest inquirers here. Be honest men and 
women. Push your research. Be indefatigable and faithful, 
and charitable to those who differ from you. If Wv ^annot differ 
from a brother here without denouncing a curse upon his head, 
what shall hinder the same dark spirit from dwelling in our 
bosoms in eternity? And shall we carry the dreadful habit into 
the changeless future ? I would not do it for the universe ! 

Who will go into this great field, throw open his heart to the 
infinite and boundless love of God, and enter upon the solution 
of the great and glorious mysteries of God's universe ? Those 
who will do it, shall take their place among the morning stars, 
and " shine as the brightness of the firmament and as the stars 
forever and ever." — President Asa Mahan, D. D. 

THE SAINTS SHALL SHINE AS THE STARS. 

Christian workers shall shine like the stars in clusters. In 
looking up, you find the worlds in family circles. Brothers and 
38 



594 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



sisters — they take hold of each other's hands and dance in 
groups. Orion in a group. The Pleiades in a group. The solar 
system is only a company of children, with bright faces, gathered 
around one great fireplace. The worlds do not straggle off. 
They go in squadrons and fleets, sailing through immensity. 

So Christian workers in heaven will dwell in neighborhoods 
and clusters. I am sure that some people I will like in heaven 
a great deal better than others. Yonder is a constellation of 
stately Christians. They lived on earth by rigid rule. They never 
laughed. They walk every hour, anxious lest they should lose 
their dignity. But they love God ; and yonder they shine in 
brilliant constellation. Yet I shall not long to get into that 
particular group. Yonder is a constellation of small-hearted 
Christians — asteroids in the eternal astronomy. While some 
souls go up from Christian battle, and blaze like Mars, these 
asteroids dart a feeble ray like Vesta. Yonder is a constellation 
of martyrs, of apostles, of patriarchs. Our souls, as they go up 
to heaven, will seek out the most congenial society. Yonder is 
a constellation almost merry with the play of light. On earth 
they were full of sympathies and songs, and tears, and raptures, 
and congratulations. When they prayed, their words took fire ; 
when they sang, the tune could not hold them ; when they wept 
over a world's woes, they sobbed as if heart-broken ; when they 
worked for Christ, they flamecr'with enthusiasm. Yonder they 
are — circle of light ! constellation of joy! galaxy of fire! Oh! 
that you and I, by that grace which can transform the worst into 
the best, might at last sail in the wake of that fleet, and wheel in 
that glorious group, as the stars, forever and ever! 

Again, Christian workers will shine like the stars in swiftness 
of motion. The worlds do not stop to shine. There are no fixed 
stars save as to relative position. The star most thoroughly 
fixed flies thousands of miles a minute. The astronomer, using 
his telescope for an Alpine stock, leaps from world-crag to 
world-crag, and finds no star standing still. The chamois- 
hunter has to fly to catch his prey, but not so swift is his game 
as that which the scientist tries to shoot through the tower of 
*he observatory. Like petrels mid-Atlantic, that seem to come 



TALMAGE—PUNSHON. 595 

from no shore, and be bound to no landing-place — flying, flying 
— so these great flocks of worlds rest not as they go — wing and 
wing — age after age — forever and ever. The eagle hastes to its 
prey, but we shall in speed beat the eagles. You have noticed 
the velocity of the swift horse under whose feet the miles slip 
like a smooth ribbon, and as he passes the four hoofs strike the 
earth in such quick beat your pulses take the same vibration. 
But all these things are not swift in comparison with the motion 
of which I speak. The moon moves fifty-four thousand miles 
in a day. Yonder, Neptune flashes on eleven thousand miles in 
an hour. Yonder, Mercury goes one hundred and nine thou- 
sand miles an hour. So, like the stars, the Christian worker 
shall shine in swiftness of motion. You hear now of father, or 
mother, or child, sick one thousand miles away, and it takes you 
two days to get to them. You hear of some case of suffering 
that demands your immediate attention, but it takes you an 
hour to get there. Oh ! the joy when you shall, in fulfilment 
of the text, take starry speed, and be equal to one hundred 
thousand miles an hour. Having on earth got used to Chris- 
tian work, you will not quit when death strikes you. You will 
only take on more velocity. There is a dying child in London, 
and its spirit must be taken up to God. You are there in an 
instant to do it. There is a young man in New York to be 
arrested from going into that gate of sin : you are there in an 
instant to arrest him. Whether with spring of foot, or stroke 
of wing, or by the force of some new law, that shall hurl you to 
the spot where you would go, I know not. But my text suggests 
velocity. All space open before you, with nothing to hinder 
you in mission of light, and love, and joy, you shall shine in 
swiftness of motion, as the stars, forever and ever. 

— T. Dewitt Talmage, D. D„ 

MINISTERING SPIRITS. 

Every believer is to have a pillar of rloud and a pillar of fire 
round his own homestead. Over the homely and dingy street 
in the great city, not at all to be distinguished from the houses 
on either side of it, not to your eye, but to the eye of angels 



596 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

there is a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire ; and they are not in 
the next house, because its inhabitant is a child of unbelief. 
And the dwelling-places come first. There cannot be a cloud 
upon the assembly unless there is first a cloud in the dwelling- 
place. Consecrated homes bring consecrated congregations; 
consecrated homes bring the baptism of fire. When the people 
gather together the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place 
of Mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by 
day, and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the 
glory shall be a defence. Dear brethren, this is yours if you 
like to have it. It is the simple, quiet soul, that sits at the feet 
of Jesus and listens to his voice, that has all this done for him. 
Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to 
them that are heirs of salvation ? 

" Which of the petty kings of earth 
Can boast a guard like ours, 
Encircled from our second birth 
With all the heavenly powers? " 

To be sure, we are brought into straits sometimes, just as the 
young man of Elisha was. Do you not remember when they 
were shut up in Dothan, and the knees of the young man began 
to knock together, because he looked over the walls and saw the 
Syrians about him, with their banners flying in the breeze and 
their spears glittering in the sun? He said, "Alas ! Master, 
what shall we do?" All that the prophet said was, " Lord, open 
his eyes," and as soon as his eyes were open he saw that round 
about him on the mountain were the chariots and horses of fire. 
Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister ? Per- 
haps you never thought of it, but those two words, in the origi- 
nal, are not the same, and there is very great beauty, too, in the 
feature of difference. Are they not all "worshipping" spirits r 
sent forth to minister to them that are heirs of salvation? Do 
you not see the beauty of it? To my mind, it links heaven to 
earth more exquisitely than I ever conceived before. The 
spirits that come down to minister are the spirits that went up 
from worship. 




, 



<• 



* 




^ 




'■p. 



:<0%. 




PUNSHON— HUNTING TON. 5 gy 

" Once they were mourners here below, 
And poured out cries and tears ; 
They wrestled hard, as we do now, 
With sins and doubts and fears." 

But they got over that. They are safe forever, and they find 
their happiness in ministering. God honors them by permitting 
them to minister. Are they not all worshipping spirits, sent 
down to minister unto them that are heirs of salvation ? 

That explains to me what I never knew before, how it was in 
the glorious promise which the Saviour gave to Nathaniel, the 
"ascending" came before the "descending" — "Hereafter, you 
shall see the angels of God ascending and descending." To be 
sure, they were to ascend first, in order that they might be fit 
for the ministry afterward. They are spirits of the just made 
perfect, and being made perfect, they watch with loving ministry 
over those they loved before. Are they not all worshipping 
spirits, sent down to minister unto them that are the heirs of 
salvation ? — W. Morley Pimshon, LL. D. 

HEAVEN BEGINS ON EARTH. 

Heaven is an outgrowth of the life of God; and wherever the 
life of humanity, by faith and obedience, in conformity to spir- 
itual laws and the conditions of the kingdom of regeneration and 
holiness, is united to the life of God, there men are heavenly, 
and are certain to be found in heaven when heaven is more dis- 
tinctly disclosed. Heaven is neither an addendum nor a sub- 
stitute. By the incarnation and mediation, God's life and man's 
are made one, at once and always. Here is reconciliation, and 
it is not temporary. In the individual the heavenly life begins, 
germinally at least, at the moment of regeneration. After that 
it follows the laws of the new Family of Faith, being watered 
and fed and nourished graciously, through outward and inward 
helps and organs, by ordinances and the Holy Ghost, till what 
we now call outward is lost in what is unseen, and the glory 
comes which no eye hath seen or ear hath heard. The begin- 
ning is simple. The door is open. The covenant is sure ; it is 
prepared from everlasting in the love of the Father. It waits 



59 8 



REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 



for us. We have not to wait for heaven. The Lord began his 
ministry by crying, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." It 
had come in him. It was on the earth. " This is the true God 
and eternal life." The true tabernacle of God, which the Lord 
hath pitched, is with men, and in men. 

— Rt. Rev. F. D. Huntington, D. D. 

SOON WE SHALL KNOW IT ALL. 

Soon we shall know it all. A day may unfold it. It will 
burst upon us like a revelation. We shall be speaking tenderly 
to the weeping ones about us, sorrowing ourselves to leave 
them, dreading to go; our faith struggling with terrors of doubt; 
our frames shivering as our feet enter the cold river ; darkness 
coming over us ; the earth receding, disappearing alone out in 
the pitiless tempest ; our senses closed up, death will have com- 
pleted its work ; eternity, heaven, opens on our eyes ; our ears 
with sounds seraphic ring; lend, lend your wings, I mount, I 
fly. O death, where is thy sting ! O grave, where is thy vic- 
tory! In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the whole 
scene will change. While the weeping living are yet caressing 
the still warm clay, the loving watchers will be lavishing their 
kisses of welcome. Not as strangers approaching some lonely 
shore should we depart, but as loved and longed-for pilgrims, 
who return to open arms and welcoming hearts. 

I long to see Jesus, and angels who have watched over me 
and befriended me, and all of the great and good whose virtues 
have enriched the ages. I know I shall hasten rapturously to 
worship my Lord ; may-be he will take me in his arms to bear 
me over the river, and so to him I shall pour out my great and 
reverent love ; but I am certain I shall see crowding down near- 
est the shore some forms that will give me their first caresses — 
forms that will be more to me than all the jewelled hosts that 
circle the eternal throne. The etiquette of heaven will recognize 
their right. Nor will it be for a day. — Bishop R. S. Foster. 



Heaven's gates are not so highly arched as princes' palaces; 
they that enter there must go upon their knees. — Webster. 



ANONYMOUS. 

THE GOLDEN HILLS. 

Beautiful stand the golden hills, 

Whose feet are washed by the river Death, 
We think of them with rapturous thrills, 

With glowing hearts and fainting breath; 
Those glorious hills of God, that lie 
Beneath his love's unclouded sky. 

Between us and their wondrous glow, 
The cold, dark river swiftly glides, 

And o'er its bosom, hanging low, 
A veil of mist the glory hides ; 

No eye of love, with vision keen, 

May pierce beyond that darksome scre«n. 

Yet this we know, the bliss serene 

There thrilling heart may not conceire, 

No ear hath heard, no eye hath seen, 
The waiting raptures God will give, 

When, past the tides of earthly ills, 

His loved ones gain the golden hills. 

And when a pure and loving soul, 

With rapturous eyes upraised in pray«r, 

Is borne to those bright tides that roll 
Beyond the misty barrier, 

A gleam of glory bursts its way 

Across the waters cold and gray 

And they who wait upon the strand 
To watch the loved, receding face, 

And see the pale and shadowy hand 
Toward them wave a last embrace, 

When on the stream that light appears, 

Are comforted amid their tears. 

And, rising from that hallowed place, 
They take their way through life again, 

Bereft, but with the power to trace 
Henceforth, in darkest hours of pain, 

The heavenly gleam that softly plays 

Abeve God's most mysterious ways. 



599 



600 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

WAITING FOR THE DAWN. 

We are waiting, Father, waiting 

Through the long and dreary night, 
Watching, 'mid the gath'ring shadows. 

For the morning's promised light ; 
We are trusting, Father, trusting, 

Though no ray of light appears; 
And the night is filled with glory, 

Though we see our God through tear& 

We are gazing, Father, gazing, 

On a sky with clouds o'ercast, 
And no sunbeam falls upon us, 

Through the blackness, deep and vast. 
E'en our Father's face is hidden, 

But we know his loving smile 
Lights the heaven beyond the darkness, 

And will dawn on us erewhile. 

We are bearing, Father, bearing 

Burdens thou hast kindly given; 
We are learning to be patient, 

While earth's chains are being riven % 
And the links that bind our spirits 

To their destiny above, 
Thou art forging from our sorrows, 

Thou art riveting in love. 

We are learning, Father, learning, 

Not to murmur or complain, 
Though our dearest friendships fail us, 

And our fondest hopes are vain. 
Thou dost hold us by a cable, 

With its anchor in the sky, 
And we wait, 'mid shattered idols, 

For the dawning, by and by. 

—Hayes C. French, M. D. 

THE MORNING OF THE EVERLASTING DAY. 

Morning falls on the tomb. Morning wakes the eyes of the 
soul that had shut themselves for a season in sympathy with the 
poor body in the hour of dying. Morning rewakes all its powers 
and aspirations. That morning, dear brethren, may come to you 
and to me as now sometimes a morning comes to one who has 



C. F. DEEMS, D.D. ^ ol 

been in pain until the senses have become benumbed, and then 
had fallen asleep and now wakes in perfect ease. We may fall 
asleep in garret, or cellar, or mansion, lost in a forest, or afloat 
on a wreck. The shadows had gathered, the stars had become 
beclouded, the rain was falling, the winds were blowing aloof, 
night and clouds and weeping, fainting, senselessness — and then, 
morning ! We shall wake in light and warmth and health. 
We shall see the skies of eternity, we shall breathe the airs of 
Paradise, we shall feel the vigor of immortality, we shall hear the 
voices of heaven — sweet voices, musical, not too transporting, 
nor yet the sound as of many waters, but voices attuned to our 
condition, mingling old familiar words and tunes with tones and 
cadences that could come only from hearts sweet with heaven, 
and through throats and mouths that had long breathed the air 
of heaven. Perhaps they may make us happy with a song of as- 
surance which once drew tears from our eyes as a song of hope: 

" Here is rest for the weary, 
Here is rest for the weary, 

Here is rest for you. 
On this morning side of Jordan, 
In these sweet fields of Eden, 
Where the tree of Life is blooming, 
Here is rest for you." 

Can we refrain ? Shall we not join them ? Shall we not go 
with them ? Shall we not quickly learn to sing the Song of 
Moses and the Lamb, the song of everlasting law and everlast- 
ing love ? / Shall we not see and hear and join "the great voice 
of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia: Salvation and glory 
and honor and power unto the Lord our God? " It is morning ! 
Hark ! " The voice of a great multitude as the voice of many 
waters and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia ; 
for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth." We join that throng, 
we join that song. Where is Weeping now ? Fled with the 
Night. He has wiped all tears from all eyes. O softest 
hand of everlasting love ! O eyes forever brightened by the 
benediction of the touch of the Lord! O Morning, cloudless, 
tearless, brilliant, balmy and everlasting ! O men, O brothers, 



602 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

bear the weeping ! The night is short. The morning comes. 
In the night weeping is a lodger, in the morning joy is an ever- 
lasting mate. 

" Brief life is here our portion, 

Brief sorrow, short-lived care ; 
The life that knows no ending, 

The tearless life, is there. 
And now we fight the battle, 

But then shall wear the crown 
Of full and everlasting 

And passionless renown." 

Break, O Morning, break on the souls that are in the night 
of sin ; and on our graves, break, O Morning of the Everlasting 
Day !— C. R Deems, D. D. 

REFLECTIONS. 

The future discloses to us a life of darkness and a life of light. 
The life of darkness is the life of sin. Sin is darkness. The 
ungodly man walketh in darkness and knoweth not whither he 
goeth. If the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that 
darkness ! It is a darkness which shall deepen forever, unless 
chased away by the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness. 
But if we choose the light, it shall be ours — a light shining 
more and more unto the perfect day. He that followeth Christ 
walketh not in darkness, but hath- the light of life. He is de- 
livered from the power of darkness, and is translated into the 
kingdom of God's dear Son. He is passed from death unto life. 
The transition is a Golden Dawn upon his soul. It irradiates 
his pathway, cheers his spirit, gladdens his years as they pass, 
penetrates the gloom of the dark valley before him, and flashes 
in peerless splendor on the eternal shore. This is the only light 
that furnishes any explanation of the mystery of life. An emi- 
nent jurist has said that the query, " Is life worth living? would 
answer itself in the negative if this, the present state, is all there 
is. If nature stops with the grave worm, so far as conscious 
existence is concerned; if we toil and suffer only to enrich the 
soil, and return to the material elements, life is a very ' lame and 
impotent conclusion/ It is a fraud imposed upon us in helpless 



J. H. POTTS, 603 

infancy, and endured under duress through all our years. If it 
leads nowhere ; if the process of nature is not progressive from one 
state of conscious being to another; if the grand instinct of im- 
mortality is not responded to in nature as other human instincts 
are, cui boni? Why stay here at all? Why carry the burdens 
of life? Why be poor, despised, ignorant? Why suffer for 
others ? Why breast contumely, endure scorn, cling to duty, 
when its demands are irksome? Of what use the length or 
brevity of life ? If it ends in nothing, why not end it ? For in 
that case no man can give a satisfactory reason for living." 

But the Great Future, as seen in the light of God's truth, 
gives significance to human existence, and affords a grand in- 
centive to the highest and holiest endeavor. Who, that believes 
he may progress from one state of being to another, and improve 
himself in knowledge and intelligence forever, can content him- 
self with the mere consumption or accumulation of material 
things ? A lady was walking in her garden. As she looked 
upon the opening buds, and withering blossoms, and drooping 
stems, and dying leaves, she became engaged in serious medita- 
tion. At length, upon a card, she gave expression to the fol- 
lowing sentiment : 

" To think of summers yet to come, 
That I am not to see ; 
To think a weed is yet to bloom 
From dust that I shall be." 

Carelessly she dropped the card, but next morning, when she 
returned to her accustomed walk, she found written upon its 
back : 

M To think, when heaven and earth are fled, 
And times and seasons o'er, 
When all that can be shall be dead, 

That I shall die no more; 
Oh ! where will then my portion be, 
Where shall I spend eternity ? " 

It is for each of us, dear readers, to determine what our future 
portion shall be. This is a solemn thought, and, indeed, it is a 
solemn thing to live in this world — a solemn thing to be subject 
to all the changes and influences to which we are and must be 



604 REWARD OF THE RIGHTEOUS. 

subject here — a solemn thing to be forming characters for eter- 
nity. Yet, hastening as we are to the end of life, with a speed 
that knows no intermission, we should be thankful for the things 
which remind us of our journey's end, and force us to hold con- 
verse with ourselves and with God. 

" The evening cloud, the morning dew, 
The withering grass, the fading flower, 
Of earthly hopes are emblems true, 
The glory of a passing hour. 

" But though earth's fairest blossoms die, 
And all beneath the skies is vain, 
There is a brighter world on high, 
Beyond the reach of care and pain." 

For that brighter world let us prepare. Let us use this world 
as not abusing it. Let us walk in spiritual light. Let us have 
fellowship one with another, knowing that the blood of Jesus 
Christ cleanseth us from all sin. Let us follow peace with all 
men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. 
Let us learn useful lessons from the past, and be deeply humble 
in view of our unfaithfulness. Let us look to the future with an 
entire distrust of ourselves, and with entire dependence on him 
who is able to make all grace abound toward us. Thus shall 
we serve him with fear, and come to Zion with songs, and ever- 
lasting joy upon our heads. 

" That great mysterious Deity 
We soon with open face shall see ; 

The beatific sight 
Shall fill the heavenly courts with praise, 
And wide diffuse the golden blaze 

Of everlasting light." 



•■'"«-- , M 




x- 



-JSAiL 



THE ASCENSION. 
And a cloud received Him out of their sight. — Acts i. 9, 



Authors and Contributors. 



Page 

Abbott, J. S. C 242 

Abdy, Mrs 577 

Adams, Rev. Dr. Nehemiah . . . 482, 495 

Adams, Melchior 176, 452 

Addison, Joseph 351 

Adkin, Rev. Dr. E 352, 445, 519 

Aikman, Rev. Dr. William 301 

Akers, Mrs. J. E 178 

Alcott, A. Bronson 80 

Alfred, Dean 460 

Alden, Rev. Dr. Joseph 140 

Alger, William R 323 

Alleine, Joseph 103 

Anderson, Hans Christian 247 

Aquinas, Thomas 417 

Armitage, Rev. Dr. Thomas t>1Z 

Arnold, Rev. Dr. J. M 380, 486 

Arthur, Rev. William... . . 68,327, 385 
Axtell, Rev. Dr. N. H 468 



Bacon, Lord 71, 101 

Barbauld, Mrs. Anna L 116 

Barnes, Rev. Dr. Albert 453, 493 

Barrow, Rev. Dr. Isaac 138 

Bascom, John 346 

Baxter, Richard 170, 256, 357, 534 

553 

Bayless, Dr. J. H 464 

Beaumont, Dr. Joseph 482, 520 

Beecham, Rev. John 221 

Beecher, Rev. H. W 88, 163, 167 

Berg, Dr 564 

Bertram, R. A 576 

Bickersteth , Edward H 64 

Bidwell, Rev. Ira D 364 

Binney, Amos 309 

Binney, Thomas 342 

Blair, Dr. Hugh 59, 133, 138, 211 

316, 343. 347 

Blair, Robert 53, 95 

Bonwick, James 330, 397 

Boswell, James 135 

Bowles, Catherine 250 

Bowman, J 306 

Bowrinjj, Sir John 366 



PACfc 

Brooks, Thomas , 285 

Brooks, Bishop Phillips 14 1 

Brunson, Rev. Dr. Alfred 116 

Bryant, William Cullen. 96, 98, 104, 587 

Buckle, Sir Henry Thomas 349 

Bunting, W. M 427 

Bunyan, John 77, 516 

Burnett, Dr. T 496 

Burns, Robert 72 

Burrett, Elihu 384 

Burrough, Edward 362 

Bushnell, Rev. Dr. Horace. . . . 123, 550 

Butler, Bishop Joseph 152, 155 

Byron, Lord 108, 290 

CA. G 575 

Calvin, John 

Carlyle, Thomas 225 

Carpenter, Rev. Dr. H. S. . 75, 96, 519 

522, 578 

Chalmers, Rev. Dr. Thomas 38, 423 

589 

Cheever, Rev. Dr. George B 467 

Chrysostom, Bishop John 277, 400 

404, 405 

Cicero, Marcus Tullius 316 

Clark, Dr. Adam 445, 51 1 

Clark, W. B 165 

Clark, W. G , 338 

Clark, Bishop D. W IOO, 147, 156 

169, 220, 529 

Clarke, James Freeman 80, ?,22 

Cocker, Rev. Dr. B. F .. 335, 336 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 286 

Colton, Dr. Calvin 103 

Cook, Joseph 27, 320, 375, 417 

Cook, Eliza 82 

Cooke, William 402, 442, 508 

Cowles, Professor H 439 

Croly , George 79 

Crosby, Chancellor Howard 512 

Cumming, Rev. Dr. John 584 

Curran, Dr. Robert 210 

Curry, Rev. Dr. Daniel. ... 67, 347, 441 

Cuyler, Rev. Dr. Theodore L 578 

Cyprian, Thascius Caecilius 279 

(605) 



6o6 



LIST OF AUTHORS. 



Page 

D. A.J 588 

B.M. K 331 

Dale, R. W ....*. 382 

Dana, R. H , . . 346 

Dante 424 

Dashiel, Rev. Dr. R. L 555 

Davy, Sir Humphrey 315 

Dawson, Principal J. W 32 

Deems, Rev. Dr. Charles F 600 

De Puy, Rev. Dr. W. H 40 

De Quincey, Thomas 104 

De Kovan, Dr. James 304 

De Vere, Sir Aubrey 284 

Dick, Dr. Thomas 364, 455 

Dickens, Charles 43, 150, 257 

Dickenson, Rev. Dr. A. E 143 

Disraeli 89, 90, 157 

Doddridge, Dr. Phillip 482 

Donne, John 79 

Draper, Professor 45 

Duke of Argyll ^3 

Dunn, Rev. Dr. L. R 376 

Eddy, Rev. Dr. Z 41 1 

Eddy, Rev. Dr. T. M 263 

Edwards, President Jonathan. 49, 52, 479 

Ellicott, Bishop C. J.... 381 

Elliot, William G 265, 276 

Evans, Christmas 125 

Erskine, Dr. Ebenezer 63 

Ewald, Heinrich 412 

Faber, Frederick William. . . „ . . 75, 570 

Farningham, Marianne 537 

Feltham, Owen 116 

Fenelon 286 

Fiske, General Clinton B 235 

Flavel, John 286 

Flemming, Dr 151 

Flourin, Professor 39 

Foss, Bishop Cyrus D 172, 329 

Foster, Bishop R. S. . 158,299,538, 598 

Fowler, Bishop C. H 531 

Fuller, Rev. Dr. Richard no 

French, Hayes, C, M. D 600 

Geikie, Dr. Cunningham 94, 210 

Gethin, Lady 99 

Gibson, Rev. Dr. J. Monro , . . 408 

Gill, Rev. Dr. John 166, 273 

Glasgow, J . o 302 

Goethe 162 

Goodwin, E. P 422, 582 

Gouge, Dr. Thomas 146 

Graham, Isabella 61 

Griffen, Rev. Dr. E. D.. .. 508, 539, 548 

Grout, Rev. H. M 419, 420 



Page 

Guthrie, Rev. Dr. Thomas. 97, in, 130 

176, 408 

Hagner, L. H 569 

Halford, Sir Henry 140 

Hall, A. W 365 

Hall, Dr. W. W 48, 63 

Hall, Dr. Robert no 

Hall, Bishop Joseph 105 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene „ 100 

Hamilton, Rev. G 300 

Hamline, Bishop L. L 268, 369, 558 

Harbaugh, Henry 173 

Hartley, Dr. David 495 

Havergal, F. R 541 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 106 

Haweis, Rev. Dr. Thomas 144 

Heber, Bishop Reginald 88 

Headley, J. T 208 

Hemans, Mrs. F. D 55 

Herbert, George. . . . 103, 281, 304, 305 

Hervey, Rev. James 53, 85, 569 

Hippocrates 44 

Hodge, Professor A. A 150, 15 1 

Hodgson, Rev. Dr. Robert 97 

Hobert, Bishop J. H 403 

Hood, Thomas 68 

Hopkins, President Mark 34 

Holme, Rev. Dr. J. Stanford 568 

Horace 79 

Howe, John „ 72 

Hunter, Rev. Dr. William 239 

Huntington, Bishop.. . 278, 597 

Hutton, Rev. William 319 

Hurst, Bishop John F ............ . 379 

Irving, Washington „ „ 60 

J.C.M 143 

Janes, Rev. E. L 229 

Jeffers, Rev. Dr. W 480, 484 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel 62, 146 

Jordon, N. W 271 

Kempis, Thomas A 112 

King, Henry 264 

Kittredge, Dr. A. E 366 

Knapp, Professor George C. . . . 332, 454 

Knox, John 423 

Xrummacher, Dr. F. W 407 

Lange, Rev. Dr. J. P 369 

Lorimer, Rev. Dr. George C 359 

Lee, Rev. Dr. Luther 322 

Leech, Rev. George V 378 

Lewis, Rev. Dr. Taylor.. 438 

Liddon, Canon 353, 362 



LIST OF AUTHORS. 



607 



Page 

Longfellow, H. W 283, 385 

Logan, John 58, 142, 401 

Lowell, J. Russell . 265 

Luthardtj Rev. Dr. Chr. Ernst. . 56, 84 
120, 350, 353 

Luther, Martin 397, 443 

Lytton, Lord Bulwer 76, 350 

Lytle, General 244 

Mackey, Charles 275 

Macmillan 86, 87 

Magoon, E. L 240 

McCarty, Rev. Dr. J. H 241 

McCaulev, Lord 240, 272 

McC, W. S 486 

McCosh, President James 532 

McLaren, A 308 

McLeod, Rev. Dr. Norman 137 

McClintock and Strong 554 

McDuff, Rev. Dr. J. R 83, 546 

March, Rev. Dr. Daniel 144 

Mahan, President Asa 535, 591 

Martineau, Dr. James 289 

Martensen, Dr. H 327 

Martin, Theodore 230 

Mason, Dr. John 361 

Marvell, Andrew 52 

Marvin, Bishop Enoch M 494, 557 

Mattison, Rev. Dr. Hiram 413 

Melancthon, Philip 121 

Merrill, Bishop S. M 482 

Mills, Abbie 567 

Milton, John 464 

More, Hannah 560 

Morris, Bishop T. A 1 14, 115 

Muller, Max 352 

Neander, Dr. Augustus 262 

Nelson, Dr. David 181 

Nevins, Dr. R. W 54, 557 

Newman, John Henry 590 

Ninde, Bishop W. X 387 

Owen, A 217, 219, 220 

Palmer, Rev. Dr. Ray , 513 

Parker, Rev. Dr. Joseph 267 

Pascal, Blaise 158 

Payne, President C. H 329 

Payson, Rev. Dr. Edward 159, 160 

Phillippe 48, 51, 119, 128, 139, 258 

Pierson, Rev. Dr. Arthur T 146 

Plato 206 

Pollok, Robert 65, 484 

Pope, Alexander 60, 71 

Porter, President Noah 31S 

Prentice, George D 348 



Page 

Priest, Nancy A. W 518 

Prime, Dv. S. Ircnrcus. . .. 279, 303, 571 
Punshon, Dr. W. Morley 217, 595 

Quarles, Francis 158 

Raleigh, Sir Walter 51, 55, 140 

Raymond, Rev. Dr. M.. . 340, 399, 437 
Reid, John. . 59, 184, 262, 317, 463, 542 

573 

Reid, D. M 545 

Richter 48, 281, 507 

Robertson, Frederick W 149, 346 

Robinson, Rev. Dr. C. S.. . 86, 103, 136 

Rumi Dschellaleddin 589 

Ruskin, John 108 

Rutherford, Dr. Samuel 552 

Ryan, I. W 566 

Saurin, Dr. J 88, 439, 456, 497, 521 

Scriver, Charles 115 

Seiss, Dr. Joseph A 490 

Seneca ; 91 

Shakespeare, William. . . . 102, 185, 271; 

Sherwen, Dr 241 

Shirley, J 84, 122 

Simpson, Bishop M 160, 162, 529 

Socrates 336 

Sophocles 213, 216 

South, Dr. Robert 405 

Southgate, Rev. Charles M. . . . 438, 514 

Southey, Robert 102 

Sprague, Dr. William B 543 

Spencer, Dr. Ichabod S ■ 331 

Spenser, Edmund 77 

Spencer, James M. A 547 

Spurgeon, Rev. Charles H 369 

St. Barnard 565 

Stalker, Rev. Thomas 153 

Stanley, Dean 360 

Sterne, Lawrence 129 

Stevens, W. B 68 

Stockton, Thomas H 564 

Stowe, Mrs. H. B 581 

Summers, Rev. Dr. T. O. . 42, 256, 257 
290, 291, 292, 293, 295, 296, 298, 395 

Sutclifife, Rev. Dr. Joseph 352, 547 

Swing, Professor David 74, 270 

Talmage, Rev. Dr. T. Dewitt. . 83, 86 
„, , 426, 430, 560, 563, 593 

Taylor, Jeremy 129, 146, 443 

Taylor, Isaac 58, 1 55, 552 

Taylor, Rev. Dr. William M.. . 106, 122 

Taylor, Sophia 84 

Tennyson, Alfred . . . 185 

Tertullian 274, 395, 396, 415, 425 

Thomas, Rev. Dr. II. W.. . 37, 163, 344 

429, 539 



6o8 



LIST OF AUTHORS. 



Page 

Thome, Professor J. A 518 

Thompson, Bishop Edward 171, 325 

398 

Thompson, Rev. Dr. A. C 136 

Tillotson, Archbishop 431 

Townsend, Rev. Dr. L. T 477 

Tracy, R. S 92 

Trench, Archbishop 91, 406, 414 

Trumbull, H. Clay 150, 481 

Tupper, M. F 314 

Ulhorn, Dr. Gerhard 333 

Upham, Dr. Francis F 106 

Van Oosterzee, Dr. J. J 129, 130 

Vincent, Bishop J. H 385 

Wads worth, Rev. Dr. Charles 66 

Wakefield, Rev. Dr. Samuel 417 

Watson, Rev. Dr. Richard.. 59, 121, 559 

Watts, Isaac 75 

Ware, Mary G 72, 74 



Pag» 

Warren, Bishop D. W 341 

Webster, Daniel 132 

Wentworth, Rev. Dr. E 274 

Wesley, Charles 305 

Wesley, John 57, 565 

Whedon, Rev. Dr. D. D.. . 28, 375, 416 

White, Henry Kirk 114 

Whittier, John Greenleaf 328, 546 

Wilkinson, Sir I. Gardener 259 

Wirt, William 64 

Wise, Rev. Dr. Daniel. . . . 232, 241, 263 
Withrow, Rev. Dr. W. H. 166, 215 216 
Wythe, Rev. Dr. J. H .' 41 

Xenophon 278 

Young, Dr. Edward 147, 161, 337 

Zimmerman, Rev. C. H 4.66 

Zschokke 47, 96, 107, in, 153, 168 

175, 288, 314, 544 



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